


The Point Game

by Marvelite5Ever



Series: That X-Force AU where the mercenaries like attention, the telepathekenetics have varying degrees of guilt complexes, and the genetically enhanced, nanoactive supersoldiers are almost constantly confused [7]
Category: Cable and Deadpool, Deadpool (Comics), Deadpool - All Media Types
Genre: BAMF Deadpool, BAMF Noh-Varr, Betsy is exasperated, Deadpool being Deadpool, Deadpool whump, Explosions, F/M, I did not make any of them up guys, Jean-Phillipe is exasperated, M/M, Nathan is exasperated, Neena is exasperated, Noh-Varr doesn't understand humans, Noh-Varr has cool abilities, Noh-Varr is awesome, Noh-Varr is hard to annoy, Noh-Varr is hard to disturb, Noh-Varr is just confused, The Kree vs. Humans Point Game, The Point Game, Wade enjoys annoying Nate, Wade enjoys annoying everybody, Wade has basically adopted Noh-Varr, Wade is ridiculously proud of Noh-Varr, Whump, X-Force busts a Purifier base, X-force - Freeform, all Noh-Varr's abilities are canon, also Nate is a sap, also known just as, but it's Deadpool so, but we all already knew that, characters are badass, editing this monster was a nightmare, everyone is exasperated, except for Noh-Varr, he's disturbingly chill about it, it's unofficially official, oh gawd the numbers, ridiculously long one-shot, someone let me know if there's something wrong with the numbers, that don't get enough attention in the comics, there be action and explosions!, warning for a torture scene, way too many numbers, way too many song references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-07-12 20:27:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7121392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marvelite5Ever/pseuds/Marvelite5Ever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Wade tallies points in the Kree vs. Humans game.</p>
<p>Basically, counting the reasons why Wade wants to adopt Noh-Varr. And just a ton of team banter. And ass-kicking of bad guys. Oh, and explosions. Can't forget all the explosions. </p>
<p>(Sequel to <i>Silent Treatment</i>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Point Game

**Author's Note:**

> A HUGE THANKS to the 20 people who reviewed _Silent Treament_ : Stryfe (Wade_Winston_Wilson), Surefall, ladopa, kakashikrazy256, sbdrag, lutz, Eloise_w, Oldsmobile_98, megpie205, naid, alittlebitrestless, Soupernabturel, daemoninwhite, Ray, superpika1of4, Little_Phantom, Aleksa_Kai, FluffyHippogriff, ykyk, and memorimode. 
> 
> Seriously, this story would not be posted without your interest and encouragement. This is for you guys! I hope you enjoy.
> 
> * * *
> 
> **_Wasn't Expecting That_ , Chapter 3: “Providence, Aliens, Idiots and Kisses”**
> 
>  
> 
> Nate was getting a strange expression on his face, and Wade snickered. “Yes, Priscilla, the kid is smarter than you. Has more understanding of the space-time continuum, too.” 
> 
> “I make up for it with my lack of understanding of human nature,” Noh-Varr offered calmly, though the corner of his lips quirked as if he was fighting off a smirk. He looked at Nate thoughtfully. “You have a strong chronal signature, from both the past and the future.” 
> 
> “I've done a fair amount of time-traveling, yes,” Nate said. 
> 
> Noh-Varr shook his head. “Time-travel is impossible because the time-traveler has changed. That's basic multidimensional cadet theory. You haven't time-traveled—you've been living in time nonlinearly. Your past is the the future of this world, and yet, the future of this world will not be your past, because your coming back in time—among other things that have happened—has changed it. There are many possible realities within each dimension—there is simply one that has the strongest signature. But that doesn't mean the others haven't happened or won't happen.” 
> 
> [INSTA-HEADACHE!]
> 
> “Kree: 1. Humans: 0,” Wade said, snickering.
> 
>  
> 
> * * *
> 
> **_Mission Impossible_ , Chapter 2: “Queen of Skrulls v. King of Pain"**
> 
>  
> 
> Before either of them could attack him (they definitely looked like they were going to), a ridiculous, hollow Demi Moore voice rumbled through the room. “Ooh, _burn!_ Kree: 23; Humans: 7.” 
> 
> Wade, dressed in a red Deadpool t-shirt and black Deadpool boxers, sauntered over to Nathan, grinning as he said, “Are you _sure_ we can't adopt him?” 
> 
> “Like I'd _want_ to be adopted by _you two,_ ” Noh-Varr snorted. 
> 
> Wade snickered. “Kree: 24; Humans: Still 7.”

* * *

**_~Now~_ **

* * *

Wade called it The Point Game. 

He had many different versions of The Point Game, but the one that was the most infamous within X-Force was the _Kree vs. Humans_ Point Game. Which had started when X-Force first went to recruit Noh-Varr, aka Marvel Boy, and hadn't stopped since.

For example, the Kree got a point whenever Noh-Varr made a smarting comment, or whenever he knew more about the space-time continuum, or any other sciencey thing, than everybody else did. Or when he had the highest Skrull death count during the huge battle during the Skrull Invasion. (Not that the humans didn't get any points—they did, just somehow they always got way fewer.) 

The Point Game was driving everybody nuts but Noh-Varr—which had meant an additional point to the Kree for not being annoyed by The _Kree vs. Humans_ Point Game. 

“Kree: 116! Humans: Still 31.” 

All the humans (mutants included) on the X-Force team glared at Deadpool. 

Deadpool looked back at them, mask stretching around his large grin. 

After a moment, Cable sighed. “You guys know that Wade's just doing that to annoy us, don't you?” 

“I was wondering,” Marvel Boy admitted. “It didn't make sense that he would take such glee in my superiority to his own race.” 

“Humans: Now at 32!” Deadpool said, punching Cable in the arm, snickering when the man raised his white eyebrows in response. “Kree: Still 116.” 

Oh, right—the humans got a point whenever Noh-Varr didn't understand something, but one of the other X-Force members _did_ understand, and both opinions were voiced. (If nobody understood, then nobody got any points. See: simple!) 

“I do not understand this Point Game,” Marvel Boy said, as they crept through the woods in the dark of night, closing in on a Purifier base they were on a mission 'to purify,' as Wade had so 'punnily' put it. “What is the point?” 

“The Kree made a pun!” Deadpool said gleefully, even as he pulled out a handgun out from one of his thigh-holsters (he had three gun holsters strapped to his thighs, two on one leg and one on the other, as well as having a dagger holster on each of his calves, two katanas and a machine gun and a plasma rifle on his back, and belts of extra machine gun bullets around his upper arms as well as slung over his shoulder across his chest, as well as having rows of grenades attached to his belt and having stuffed more explosives into all his pouches then should have mathematically fit), making sure it was cocked and loaded, while also somehow managing to not walk into any trees even though he wasn't looking where he was going. “Kree: Now 117. Humans: Still at 32.” 

Marvel Boy crouched down, placing a palm against the soil. “If it is a game, then what is the purpose?” he asked even as he felt for vibrations of anyone nearby. “Is there a winner? And if so, what does the winner get upon winning?” 

“Well, Noh, currently _you're_ the winner,” Deadpool said, grinning as he twirled the gun around a finger and then shoved it back into its holster. “And you get the right to lord it over all humans' heads.” 

“It is not necessary to remind me of my superiority to humans, for I am fully aware,” Marvel Boy pointed out as he stood up. “There's nobody nearby,” he told them, “but there's a lot of activity at the buildings in the valley that way.” He gestured the way they were already going. 

“Maybe the humans need to be reminded of your superiority so that they don't get god complexes,” Deadpool suggested, looking pointedly at his taller-and-buffer-than-Thor boyfriend, who was walking beside the mercenary as they kept moving through the shadows beneath the trees. 

For how many of them there were, and how _big_ some of them were, and the fact that they couldn't seem to stop talking, X-Force was actually being amazingly quiet about it all.

Possibly it was because the crickets in the forest around them were being so incredibly _loud_ , despite how _tiny_ they were.

“Really, he's just trying to annoy us all, alien boy,” Domino explained to the confused-looking Kree.

“To what purpose?” Marvel Boy asked, looking at her.

“Because it's what he _does_ ,” Fantomex snorted from just behind them. “As far as I can tell, it is what he lives for.” 

Wade happily flipped the mutant supersoldier the bird without looking.

“Y'know, Wade, if you want more attention you can always _ask_ ,” Cable pointed out mildly.

“But not annoying my lover would mean not getting to see his oh-so-sexy annoyed-face!” Deadpool said, stepping in front of Cable and walking backwards, grinning through the mask. Cable narrowed his eyes at him. “And what would be the fun in that?!” 

Not deigning that with a comment, Cable simply put a hand on Wade's shoulder and nudge him to the side so that he wouldn't walk backwards into a tree that was in his path.

“They really are absurdly cute for an old man and a malformed mental-case,” Domino remarked to the Kree next to her. 

“Aww, thank you, Dom!” Deadpool said, spinning to wave at her. “And you're really pretty for an albino with a perpetual black eye!”

Domino snickered. Wade grinned and turned back around, finally looking where he was walking.

Marvel Boy looked between them, lost. “Does _anything_ about humans make sense?” 

“I am actually fairly sure that Deadpool does not count as a human,” Fantomex said.

“Says the guy with three brains and a nervous system that turns into a spaceship,” Deadpool pointed out, turning around to point at the mutant supersoldier, once again walking backwards.

“Quit the chatter,” Cable said severely as they came up to the edge of the woods, peering around trees and crouching to peer around bracken at the large buildings in the valley below that was cast silver in the moonlight. There were three separate buildings, and they appeared to be only one story, which meant that they went down far below the ground. “We're on a _mission_ , and I need you all _focused._ ” 

Hovering around the buildings below and circling the edges of the valley were some kind of armed guard bots that somewhat resembled huge dragonflies with blinking red eyes.

“I _am_ focusing,” Marvel Boy said haughtily, his special Kree gauntlets transitioning from bracelets to guns, writhing over his hands.

“At least one of my brains is focusing,” Fantomex said, a gun in each hand as he leaned his back against a tree. “Possibly one and a half.” 

“ _Focus_ is my middle name, lovebug,” Deadpool cooed from where he was crouched next to Cable in the dark, tense and ready to spring into action.

“Ugh, your pet names are _disgusting_ , Wade,” Fantomex groaned. “Please stop.” 

“Save it for the bedroom, Wade,” Cable deadpanned, causing Deadpool to grin and Domino to snort. “We're on a mission.” 

“I'm pretty sure _I'm_ the only one actually focusing right now,” Psylocke pointed out, from where she was leaning against a tree a few feet away from the rest of them, looking at them all coolly.

“But this _waiting_ thing is booooooring,” Deadpool complained, muscles trembling with restless anticipation. “When does the _action_ start?” 

“Right now,” Cable said, standing up and shooting one of the flying robots that had just spotted them, the machine blasting apart in a rather large explosion considering it wasn't much larger than a microwave. Blame the huge variety of plasma rifle that Cable was so very fond of.

“Que the music!” Deadpool squeed excitedly, rushing out of the concealment to charge down the hill, opening fire on the robots that immediately swarmed him. He began singing, “Fight until we're winning, tell me that you're in it, don't you wanna be a superhero! A superhero! A superhero! Don't you wanna b—”

“SHUT UP, WADE!” Domino shouted at him in annoyance as she followed after him, guns blazing. 

“ _Not that song again!_ ” Fantomex cried in exasperation as he dodged the robot's blasts and shot them down with a single bullet each. 

As Marvel Boy blasted one of the dragonfly toaster bots into each other like some three-dimensional version of pool, he piped up with: “I _like_ that song.” 

“You shut up too, Music Nerd!” Domino shouted at him.

* * *

_**~Earlier that day~** _

* * *

They were flying to the location of their mission in a stolen jet (they would have just used Fantomex's spaceship, which was faster and way cooler, but they needed the jet so that they could crash it into the communication tower so the bases wouldn't be able to call for backup), and Wade was bored.

“Let's play I Spy!” he suggested brightly from the co-pilot seat, where he wasn't buckled in because he refused to wear any kind of seatbelt. 

“No,” Neena groaned, hiding her face in her hands. “No more I Spy.” 

“I spy a deranged moron who is going to get shot through his loony head if he tries to play I Spy again,” Jean-Phillipe said coolly from the pilot seat, taking one hand off the controls to point a gun at the mercenary's head just to make it clear that, yes, he _did_ mean that. 

“You guys are no fun,” Wade pouted, slouching down in his seat, before he straightened again, brightening. “Okay then, let's play: Guess The Title And Artist Of The Song That's Playing!” he reached a white-gloved hand forward to turn on the jet's radio.

“Are we turning on the radio?” Noh-Varr asked hopefully from the seat behind the mercenary.

“Yup!” Wade said, turning the music on with a flourish. 

“ _Yes!_ ” Noh-Varr grinned, beaming as he sat back, nodding his head to the beat, fingers drumming on his black and white thighs.

“Right,” Wade said, gesturing for silence so that they could all hear the music, keeping one hand over the monitor that was showing the song that was currently plying. “Okay, what song is this?” 

“'Superheroes' by The Script,” Noh-Varr announced immediately. 

“Aaaand give the alien boy a prize!” Wade cried, throwing up his arms and revealing that, yes, that was the song listed on the screen. “He's right! Kree: 110. Humans: 31.” 

4 minutes later, when that song had finished and the new song started up, Wade said, “Alright! What song is this?” 

“'Superhero' by Ross Lynch,” Noh-Varr said immediately. Again.

“Right again!” Wade cried. “Another point for the Kree! Kree: 111. Humans: 31.” 

3 minutes 30 seconds later when the next song started playing and Wade asked, “This song?” Noh-Varr didn't hesitate a moment before answering,“'Superhero' by Simon Curtis.” 

“Ding ding ding!” Wade said, pretending to ring an invisible bell. “Right yet again! The Kree's on a winning streak! Kree: 112. Humans: 31.” 

3 minutes 20 seconds later when Wade asked, “Aaaand what about this song? Anybody gonna beat the alien to it?” the other members of the team hardly had time to roll their eyes or groan before Noh-Varr answered.

“'Superhero' by Faith No More,” the alien said. 

“Nope, couldn't beat the alien that's been listening to Earth music for a few months now!” Wade said, snickering. “Kree: 113. Humans: 31.” 

5 minutes 15 seconds later... 

“Can anyone guess what song this is?” Wade asked. 

“Yeah, this is the Superhero one by the Simon guy,” Neena snorted from the seat beside the Kree, rolling her eyes. “ _Again._ ” 

“Actually, it's 'Superhero (The Remix)' this time,” Noh-Varr corrected her. “And it's Simon _Curtis._ ” 

“Marvel Boy is right!” Wade cried, removing his gloved hand from the screen to reveal the scrolling text. “Again! Kree: 114. Humans: 31.” 

“What the hell kind of a radio station _is_ this?!” Neena demanded, throwing up her hands. 

During all this, Jean-Phillipe was glaring determinedly out the window, hands clenched tight on the jet's controls, while Nathan and Betsy sat quietly in the back, content to watch. Or ignore them. It was probably a telepath/telekenetic thing. 

4 minutes 30 seconds later, when the new song started up and Wade said gleefully: “Oh hey, what's this song? You're never gonna guess what it's called!” Neena sighed, saying exasperatedly: “It's called 'Superhero,' isn't it?”

“Actually, this is 'Heroes (We Could Be) feat. Tove Lo' by Alleso,” Noh-Varr said. 

Wade gave the Kree another point, and Neena cried, “For fuck's sake!” and threw her hands up again, even more frustratedly this time, almost hitting the Kree in the face.

3 minutes 30 seconds later... 

“What about this one?” Wade asked, covering the screen with both hands, positioning them so that the black lines around his wrists lined up. “Somebody wanna take a guess before Noh does?” 

“It sounds like it's called 'Hero,'” Neena sighed, letting her head fall back against the seat. 

“Well, Noh?” Wade prompted.

“It's 'Hero (Terminite Remix) feat. Elizaveta' by Pegboard Nerds,” Noh-Varr answered easily.

“BOOM!” Wade cried, removing his hands dramatically, gesturing at the screen. “He's right again! Kree: 115. Humans: (31.”

“There are some very, very different genres of music on this station,” Nathan finally chose to remark.

“But the songs all have very, very similar titles,” Betsy added. 

“Yes, thank you two for that, Staters of the Obvious,” Neena groaned, a hand over her face. 

“It comes with the telepathic powers, I think,” Deadpool told her, twisting in his seat to pat her reassuringly on the knee. “And I'm pretty certain the only reason they never seem that frustrated is because they do all their facepalming telekenetically.” 

5 minutes 25 seconds later... 

“Alriiiiight,” Wade said as the next song started playing and he covered the screen with his white boots (which he'd complained about for two hours straight after he'd gotten the new black-and-white costume). “Anybody wanna guess what this song is?” 

“Another 'Hero' song, isn't it?” Neena sighed, not even caring any more.

“'Jukebox Hero' by Foreigner,” Noh-Varr supplied.

“Kree: 116! He's right again!” Wade cried. “Humans: Still 31.” 

“Seriously, what the _hell_ kind of a radio channel is this?!” Neena demanded, throwing her arms out exasperatedly, and she would have hit Noh-Varr in the face had he not caught her wrist. 

“A diverse genre, heroically-titled one?” Wade suggested.

“Ugh,” Jean-Phillipe groaned from the pilot's seat, finally speaking up again. “Can we play _I Spy_ now, instead?”

* * *

**_~Now~_ **

* * *

“Everybody, split up!” Cable ordered as they reached the bases, the toaster bots having never stood a chance against them. “Psylocke and I will cover the main building and the database.” He indicated the largest building in the center, and Psylocke nodded, running ahead of him. 

“Fantomex and Domino, check the 'Hospital' for medical experiments,” Cable continued, gesturing at the white, clinical-looking building to the right, “liberate any survivors and destroy anything that looks like it needs to be destroyed.” 

Fantomex saluted sarcastically even as he ran after Domino towards the building.

“Deadpool and Marvel Boy,” Cable gestured at the dark building to the left, where large machine guns were already lifting out of the roof, “your goal is to take down defenses and set up explosives in the armory as quickly as possible. We need the explosion as a distraction.” 

Then Cable charged after Psylocke, firing his ridiculously huge plasma rifle that was almost as big as he was.

Bullets tore into the ground around Marvel Boy and Deadpool as they ran towards the armory, dodging easily and returning fire, more blasé than children playing hopscotch. 

While Marvel Boy ran up the wall and onto the roof, taking out the machine guns, Deadpool waltzed around to the back of the building, setting explosives by the secret back door and then strolling away, hands over his ears as the wall exploded. 

Jogging back over to the newly-created Hulk-sized door, Marvel Boy dropping down from the roof to join him, Deadpool started singing, “Back door blown, we don't need a key, get in for free, no V.I.P. sleaze,” as they entered the building. 

Pulling a huge gun from his back, Deadpool sang, “Draw that magnum, follow my lead, now you're one of us, you're coming with me,” he gestured for Marvel Boy to follow him as he took off down a corridor, with a confidence that suggested he was very familiar with the layouts of armories. 

“Iiiit's time to kill the lights and shut this madhouse down—this place about to—toniiiight we're taking over, no one's getting ouuut!”

When armed resistance blocked their path to the main weapons cache, Deadpool broke off his singing to yell, “Go! Go! Go!” at the Kree as he fired into the troops. 

Marvel Boy leapt onto the wall and blurred down the corridor.

“Whoa! Look at the kid _go!_ ” Deadpool said appreciatively. “ _Damn_ but he's fast!” 

“Top speed of 150 miles per hour,” Marvel Boy announced as he reappeared beside the mercenary, looking incredibly smug. “ _Clock it._ ” 

All the armed guards fell to the ground, dead. 

“Kree: 118,” Deadpool said, resting the magnum on his shoulder as he glanced around the hall, impressed. “Humans: still 32. But awww, kid, you didn't leave any for me? You suck. Oh wait!” he cried, as more guards ran towards them down the hall. “Here's some!”

“All yours,” Marvel Boy said graciously.

“Y'know what?” Deadpool asked as he tucked the huge gun away, pulling out his katanas and beginning to lay waste to the soldiers. “We're just way too much awesome. Let's split up. Want some explosives?”

“Keep them,” Marvel Boy said. “I don't need 'em.” 

And then the Kree was gone.

“This place about to blow-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh!” Deadpool sang, as he swiftly slashed his way down the corridor, slaying Purifiers and placing explosives. “Blow-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh! This place about to—

“Now what? We're taking control! We get what we want, we do what you don't! Blood and gore covering the floor, we're pretty and sick, we're dangerous and bored! 

“It's time to loooose your mind and let the kiiiller ouuuut—this place about to—toniiiight we're taking lives, cuz we don't mess around!” 

“This place about blow-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh! Blow-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh!” 

He vaulted over the rail of the stairwell and fell down the center till he landed hard on the bottom floor, his fibulas and tibias creaking in protest. He ignored them, beginning to set some of the _really_ juicy explosives, and setting the Purifier's explosives to blow as well. 

Nothing went _KA-BOOOOOOOOOM!_ quite like an armory.

“Go, go, go, go insane, go insane, throw some grenades make it shrapnel 'em—let me see them hands, let me, let me see them hands,” he sang as he spotted more soldiers running down the stairs as they shot at him, and he simply threw a couple grenades up into the stairwell with them. “Go insane, go insane, throw grenades, make it shrapnel 'em, let me see them hands, let me, let me see them hands!” 

The guards' alarmed shouts were cut off in a glorious _BOOM_ , gore and body parts raining down in the explosion.

“We are taking over...” Deadpool sang, nudging a disembodied arm with his foot. “Get used it, okay?” 

“I'm done,” Marvel Boy announced, skidding to a stop next to the mercenary, white hair whipping around his half-masked face. “Let's go.”

“Oh, this place about to blow-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh!” Deadpool sang as they parkoured up the center of the stair aisle, dashed down the halls, exited the building and kept running. “Blow-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh!”

They paused at the top of a gentle rise, and Deadpool turned, gesturing melodramatically. “This place about to _blow._ ” 

With impeccable timing, the armor exploded with a huge _KA-BOOOOOOOOOM!_ that shook the ground, and resulted in fantastic plumes or red and orange and yellow that blossomed violently against the dark backdrop of the night, billows of smoke curling up to veil the waning gibbous moon.

“Holy _shit_ , Noh, how'd you get such a huge explosion?!” Deadpool asked, awed, since the half of the building that Marvel Boy had set to blow had blown at _least_ as large as the half that Deadpool had set. “You didn't even have any explosives!” 

“I can grow my fingernails out and break them off,” Marvel Boy said. “They're explosive.” 

A pause, before Deadpool said, “Echo!” to himself, probably talking to the voice in his head, before he declared louder: “Kree: 119. Humans: 32. Although,” he mused, “I think I deserve a point for that Ke$ha 'Blow' parody. That was awesome.” Another pause. “Hey, I did _too_ change stuff!” he cried indignantly. “It's not _my_ fault the song is _almost_ perfect!” 

“Come on,” Marvel Boy said, gesturing with his chin at the other two buildings. “We need to find the others so we can leave in Fantomex's spaceship.” 

“Sigh,” Deadpool said exasperatedly, posture drooping as he let his head fall back to look up at the sky. “Who cares if there's a halo around the moon? This would've been _so_ much easier if we could have brought _your_ spaceship, too. Even if it's harder to conceal than Fantomex's since his literally tucks itself _inside of him_ as his nervous system.”

“My spaceship isn't finished yet,” Marvel Boy reminded him. “It is currently lacking an engine.” 

“Yeah, yeah, Deadpool sighed, straightening up and shifting his expression into time-to-get-shit-done mode. “Okay, let's go find my boyfriend and the others.” 

They sprinted off towards the 'hospital.'

“But hey,” Deadpool asked as they ran—because he never seemed to get out of breath no matter _how_ hard he was exerting himself—“when _will_ you complete upgrading that spaceship of yours that you claim will be more awesome than Fantomex's biological one?”

* * *

_**~Sometime previous~** _

* * *

“I'm going shopping for the usual necessities,” Noh-Varr announced to the group, as the rest of the X-Force team were lounging around the main room. “Does anybody have any particular requests for anything?” 

“Tampons,” Neena said immediately, not looking away from the domino mansion she and Wade were building out of the dominoes he'd gifted her as a joke, while Betsy watched, occasionally using her telekenesis to keep the mansion from clattering apart, as well as chiding Jean-Phillipe whenever he tried to create a misdirection that the mansion had actually fallen down. Nathan would occasionally glance over at the progress of the domino mansion from where he was sitting on the couch, but mostly seemed absorbed in whatever important work he was doing on his laptop—that was, suitably enough, set on his lap. 

“Okay,” Noh-Varr said, unperturbed. “Anything else?” 

“Chocolate,” Betsy added as Wade accidentally knocked a domino that almost knocked the entire mansion down, before she stabilized it. “Lots of chocolate and tampons.” 

“Right,” Noh-Varr said.

“You're a gem.” Neena said as she added another domino to the mini model of a mansion.

“That's a metaphor, right?” Noh-Varr asked, tilting his head.

“Yup.” Neena added another domino.

“Okay, cool,” Noh-Varr said, and the slang _almost_ flowed naturally off his tongue. He was working on it. “Does the male population of this team of any requests?” 

“Condoms and lube,” Wade answered, even as he concentrated intensely on adding another domino to the structure, which was starting to look like the White House. The fact that Wade was concentrating so hard on helping build the domino model probably meant he was intensely looking forward to destroying it after it was finished.

“Right,” Noh-Varr said, still agreeable. “Anything else?” 

Wade sat back from the domino mansion and threw up his hands, exclaiming, “Damn, he is _impossible_ to fluster!” 

“Tell me about it,” Neena said, adding yet another domino.

“Anything?” Noh-Varr prompted. 

“I want a hairbrush,” Wade said, leaning forward to fix some of the dominoes' alignments. 

“...That was a joke, right?” Non-Varr said after a moment of staring at the bald merc. 

“He's getting better at recognizing humor!” Wade cried with a grin, picking up a domino and snaking it between his fingers like a coin, which somehow worked despite the clunky shape. “Somebody mark this day on the calendar!” 

“We don't have a calendar,” Betsy pointed out. The entire domino mansion was now glowing faintly with pink, just in case Wade accidentally flicked the domino into it.

“Oh,” Wade said, snapping his fingers—and sending the domino slamming into the side of the model White House. “Noh, buy a calendar, too!” The domino slid to the floor harmlessly, and Neena glared at him (he didn't notice) before nodding in thanks to Betsy. 

“And kumquats,” Wade added, a wicked grin pulling at his features. 

“ _Wade_ ,” Nathan said warningly, fixing the mercenary with a glare that could shatter bones. “ _Don't_.” 

That glare was simultaneously one of the most beautiful things Wade had ever seen and one of the most agonizing-to-be-the-receiver-of looks ever to be directed Wade's way. 

Holy shit. Nate didn't just _hate_ kumquats. He total fucking _loathed_ them with every fiber of his being. Geez Lou-fucking-ise. 

“Okay, okay!” Wade said, raising his hands placatingly, and he thought he could hear the crackling as his bones mended. “No kumquats!” He quickly turned back to Noh-Varr, since Nathan was still glaring at him. Whatever you do, absolutely do _not_ get kumquats! Nate _hates_ kumquats with a burning and eternal passion!” 

Nate was _still_ glaring at him. The voice in Wade's head suggested that it was time for a diversion.

“Ooh, passion fruit!” Wade exclaimed. He turned to Nathan, asking, “You don't have a problem with passion fruit, do ya Nate?” 

Nathan was still glaring at him, but the glare had mitigated somewhat and now just seemed annoyed. Which was an equally beautiful expression on him, and nowhere near as painful.

“Awesome,” Wade grinned at him, before turning back to the Kree. “Noh, if you see any passion fruit, buy some. Or pomegranates! Heh, _pomegraNates._ ” 

“We don't need any passion fruit _or_ pomegranates,” Nathan said evenly. “They cause too much of a mess, especially where _you're_ concerned, Wade.”

Wade groaned, facepalming with a hand full of dominoes, so that the small tiles clacked against his face and then dropped down into his lap. “I make a pomegranate grenade _one time..._ ” 

Ignoring the merc, Nathan turned to waiting Kree, saying, “What we _do_ need, Noh-Varr, is more medical supplies.” 

“Of course,” Noh-Varr said. “Is that it?” 

“Tacos?” Wade asked him hopefully. 

“I'm sure I can drop by a taco place on the way back,” Noh-Varr assured him.

“You, Noh, are the _best_ ,” Wade said vehemently. “Kree: 83. Humans: 28.” 

When Nathan continued glaring at him, Wade reached over to pat him on the knee as he said,“Nate, you could be the best if you went out and got me tacos.” He jerked a thumb at the Kree. “Noh has one-upped you.”

Nathan let a smirk curl over his rugged features. “I'm sure I'll make up for it tonight,” he murmured, voice low.

Wade giggled, poking him in the knee. “You'd _better_.”

“Alright,” Noh-Varr said from where was standing with a hand on the door frame, ready to exit the room. “If that's all, then I'll see you later.” 

“See ya, Noh!” Wade called cheerfully, settling back to lean against Nathan's legs, as Betsy had taken his place helping Neena work on the domino mansion. The progress seemed to be quicker now, and there was no more mistaking the structure for anything other than the White House.

Man, Wade and the voice in his head were _really_ looking forward to destroying the domino structure later. 

“Just make sure it's _dark_ chocolate!” Neena called after Noh-Varr as he left. “None of that milk chocolate or white chocolate crap!” 

_Five hours later..._

“Nate,” Wade said, coming into the monitor room where Nathan had retreated with his laptop when the destruction of the domino White House by the others had become toorowdy and had basically turned into a domino fight. 

And Nathan was, in fact, still on his laptop, huge fingers tapping against the delicate keys, a frown on his face. 

“Natey Nate Naaate,” Wade said, coming up behind the other man and beginning to massage the tension from his shoulders. “You know that that frown makes you look old, right?” Wade asked, leaning around to look into Nathan's face. 

Nathan groaned—whether because of Wade's annoying comment or because of Wade's awesome massage skills, it wasn't clear. 

“And how the _hell_ do you always manage to keep so _busy?_ ” Wade demanded exasperatedly, throwing up his hand, before clapping them back down on Nathan's shoulders. “There can't possibly be _that_ much to do!”

“There's always stuff to do,” Nathan said, straightening, about to start typing again. “Information to gather.” He let out another groan as Wade began massaging his shoulders again, kneading the muscles, metal and otherwise, and Nathan could do nothing but melt under Wade's expert touch. His headache that had been growing started easing slightly.

“Situations to monitor,” Nathan added, trying to keep his eyes from closing. “Plans to formulate.” He valiantly tried to start typing again. Wade kneaded harder, and Nathan's shoulders and arms went limp, and he could do nothing but lean back and sigh, a sound somewhere between exasperation and pleasure. “There's a _reason_ everyone's currently living on base, and we never have more than two days worth of downtime in a row.” 

“Well, you _do_ know how to give a date a good time,” Wade grinned, moving his hands from massaging Nathan's trapezius to massaging his deltoids. “You are _fun_ on dates—if not a little too grumpy.” 

“Well, I'm lucky enough to have a boyfriend who thinks that black ops missions are a good time,” Nathan said, giving up the fight and just relaxing back, his eyes closed, as Wade dispelled the tension that had been coiled in his muscles and the headache that had been burgeoning behind his eyes. He breathed out a sigh. “I'm sure most people would have dumped me by now.” 

“Yeah, well, most people wouldn't have ever been with me in the _first_ place, so,” Wade shrugged. 

When Nathan opened his eyes and craned his neck back to look up at the merc, Wade just grinned at him, leaning down to rub his nose against Nathan's, making the mutant chuckle softly. 

Wade moved to tease Nathan's lips into an upside-down kiss for several moments, before pulling back, asking,“So, do you think we're gonna have to go on a mission to rescue Noh?” 

“What?” Nathan said, blinking, lips still tingling.

“It's been, like, _five hours_ and he _still_ isn't back yet,” Wade informed him, stepping around the chair to settle in Nathan's lap. The merc looked something between annoyed and concerned. “Surely shopping shouldn't take him _that_ long. . But Neena's speculating about what could have happened to him—her guesses include that he got stuck in the feminine hygiene products isle trying to figure out which tampons to buy, that he got lost, or that he discovered a music concert and had to attend—while Fantomex is hoping he got captured by the Avengers because he wants to break into Avengers Tower again, and Psylocke is trying to scan for him but she's not coming up with anything.” 

Okay, Wade was _definitely_ looking worried about the Kree. Nathan found that rather endearing.  
Wade had so much more heart than anyone gave him credit for.

“I'm sure Noh-Varr is fine,” Nathan said reassuringly, moving a hand to Wade's back, rubbing comforting circles.

“That's what _I_ said,” Wade nodded, leaning into Nathan's touch and running his fingers through the silver hair at the back of the mutant's neck. “I mean, we should give him at least _six_ hours before we start worrying, I think.” 

_An hour later…_

“Okay, so I officially think it's time to really start worrying and planning a rescue mission for Noh,” Wade announced to the room, where Neena and Jean-Phillipe were idly flicking dominoes across the room at Betsy, who had a telekenetic shield thrown up and was ignoring them, reading a book. 

The three of them glanced at him. 

“Which is why, by Murphy's Law, Noh is going to walk through that door,” Wade pointed to the front door of their base, “in three… two… one… zero...” 

Nothing. 

“Negative one…” Wade continued, gesturing at the door again. “Negative two… okay, if he isn't hear by negative ten, then we _really_ need to worry. Negative three… negative five…” 

“You skipped negative four,” Jean-Phillipe informed him. 

“Negative four… negative six… negative eight…” 

Jean-Phillipe rolled his eyes. “And now you skipped negative seven.” 

“Negative seven… negative eight…” 

“You already said negative eight,” Jean-Phillipe pointed out. 

“Negative ten!” 

“You skipped negative nine.” 

“No, I didn't,” Wade said, crossing his arms. “Instead of saying negative nine, I said negative eight twice.” 

“But you still skipped negative nine,” Jean-Phillipe said. 

“No I didn't!” Waid said indignantly. “I just said it! So now it's time to start worrying!” 

“I still think he got arrested by the Avengers,” Jean-Phillipe said, sounding hopeful. 

“A throw-down with the Black Widow would be fun,” Neena agreed, knocking down the line of dominoes she'd set up. They clicked and clacked as they collapsed against each other. 

Betsy had looked back down at her book, but now she jerked her head up, looking towards the door. “Sorry to disappoint you both, but I think he finally got back.” Muttering to herself, she added irritably, “Kree minds are _so_ hard to read and detect.” 

Nathan chose that moment to appear in the doorway from the monitor room. 

Just then, the doorknob to the front door turned and the door swung open, revealing Noh-Varr holding several large shopping bags in each arm. “Sorry, that took longer than I expected,” the Kree said, stepping inside and nudging the door closed with a foot, walking over with the no doubt incredibly heavy bags in his arms as if they weighed nothing. 

“Chocolate and tampons for you two,” Noh-Varr said, placing a bag next to Neena and Betsy, before turning to Wade and Nathan, shuffling his bags into one arm so he could reach into one and pull out a couple items to throw to them, saying, “condoms and lubricant for you two, and also a calendar for you as well.” 

Wade caught the calendar and the lube, while Nathan caught the condoms, looking amused. 

“Whoa, that's a lot of groceries and supplies in stuff,” Wade remarked, raising his hairless eyebrows at all the grocery bags that the Kree was now holding in one arm. “You need help carrying any of that, kid?” 

“No, I got it,” Noh-Varr said, walking across the room to the doorway leading to the hall. “But thanks for the offer.” 

“Dude,” Wade said, watching Noh-Varr walk out of the room with all the supplies like he was walking on air. “That kid is _way_ stronger than he looks.”

When Noh-Varr came back in a few minutes later, having put everything away (superspeed and superstrength had many advantages), Neena asked, “What took you so long, alien boy?” 

“It was slightly more problematic to steal a Kree spaceship from S.W.O.R.D. than I'd expected,” Noh-Varr answered, sitting down cross-legged on the floor next to them. 

“ _Quoi?_ ” Jean-Philliped exclaimed, eyes widened through the gap in his ever-present mask.

“ _What?_ ” Wade translated/repeated, swiveling his head around to stare at the Kree, jaw dropping. 

Neena stared at Noh-Varr. “You stole a Kree spaceship from S.W.O.R.D.,” she said slowly.

“Yes,” Noh-Varr said as if it was no big deal. “It's parked in the garage—I cleared some space for it earlier.” 

“So _that's_ why you went on that cleaning spree!” Wade exclaimed, brown eyes lighting up in realization. Then he ran out of the room in the direction of the garage to go take a look at the spaceship.

“But we have _my_ spaceship, which is the _fastest_ spaceship in the world,” Jean-Phillipe pointed out, tone almost petulant, arms crossed. “We do not need another spaceship.” 

Noh-Varr was unfazed. “The Kree ship is primitive compared to the Kree designs of my home dimension, but the basic form is the same. My new project is modifying and improving it.” 

“Dude, I'm disappointed in you!” Wade exclaimed as he ran back into the room, pointing at the Kree accusingly. “If you were gonna steal a spaceship, I wanted to be there!” A slight pause where he got that expression like he was listening to the voice in his head, before he amended,“Right, correction: _we_ wanted to be there!”

“It was a one-man job,” Noh-Varr shrugged, unapologetic. He was looking around at the dominoes scattered all across the floor of the room, expression pulling slightly in confusion and curiosity. 

“Noh-Varr,” Nathan said, stepping fully into the room and wearing his serious-face. “I understand that you want your own ship, but I would have appreciated if you'd _told me_ what you were doing so that—”

“I _did_ tell you,” Noh-Varr said, raising his eyebrows slightly, unimpressed, as he looked up unconcernedly at the leader of the team. “I said I was going shopping, and that's what I did. I got the medical supplies, by the way. I distributed them between the closets in the bathrooms closest to the base's various exits.” 

“He goes to get groceries, and he comes back with groceries _and_ a spaceship,” Wade said in wonderment, shaking his head. “Kree 84. Humans: 28.” Then he looked at Noh-Varr and said frankly: “The spaceship looks weird.” 

“It's not weird,” Noh-Varr said superciliously. “It's _Kree_.” 

“Oh,” Wade said, blinking. “Well, _that_ explains it!” 

“Noh-Varr, you should have _told me_ about stealing a spaceship from S.W.O.R.D.!” Nathan said angrily, fists clenched. “Doing things like that could affect the _team_ —”

“It won't,” Noh-Varr interrupted him. “And it wouldn't. I made sure they couldn't track me, and I didn't wear the X-Force suit while stealing the ship. I made sure that it could not be traced back to this team—as far as S.W.O.R.D. is concerned, it was a lone Kree warrior stealing the ship.” 

“ _Relax_ , Priscilla,” Wade said, walking over to pat Nathan on the arm. 

Nathan glared at him.

“There's no need to control-freak about everything, y'know,” Wade said. “Save it for the bedroom, okay?” 

Nathan just stared at the merc for a moment, before he snorted despite himself, cracking a smirk.

Neena cackled.

“Trop d'informations!” Jean-Phillipe cried, placing his hands over his ears as he clenched his eyes shut, shaking his head quickly. 

“Too much information, Wade,” agreed Betsy flatly.

“Says the telepath who probably gets _way too much information_ about _everybody's_ sex lives, like, _all the time_ ,” Wade snorted. “Be thankful that Nate has psi-shields in his head and that my mind is virtually unreadable due to its constant state of cellular flux!”

“Why is it that so much of human's humor seems to revolve around allusions to sexual acts?” Noh-Varr inquired.

“Sigh,” Wade sighed, lifting his gaze to the ceiling. “Kree: 84. Humans: 29.” Then he lifted both fists into the air, declaring brightly: “We have confuzzled him yet again!” 

“I'm pretty sure 'confuzzle' is not a real word,” Noh-Varr said, brow crinkled in confuzzlement.

“Sure it is!” Wade said. “To confuse and puzzle! Look it up in the Urban Dictionary!” 

Noh-Varr's brow was still furrowed. “I think I missed that dictionary when I was learning the English language.” 

“You learned English from a _dictionary?_ ” Neena exclaimed, looking at Noh-Varr with her dark eyebrows raised. “How long did that _take_ you?” 

“About 12 hours,” Noh-Varr said.

“Is impossible!” Jean-Phillipe scoffed. 

“For _you_ , it would be,” Noh-Varr said, looking at the mutant supersoldier superiorly. “But I am—”

“Kree: 85!” Wade exclaimed gleefully. “Humans: still 29.” 

Noh-Varr nodded. “Yes, exactly.”

* * *

_**~Now~** _

* * *

Deadpool and Marvel Boy were walking through the quiet, deserted halls of the hospital. 

“Huh,” Deadpool said, as they turned a corner a found, yet again, nothing but a clean white expanse of empty hallway. “Where the hell _are_ they? This is boring. And kinda eerie. It's very quiet. I think there needs to be more screaming.” He glanced over at Marvel Boy walking beside him. “Hey, what d'ya say, DJ? _Hehe, rhyme._ What? Rhyming _never_ gets old!” 

“What do I say about what?” Marvel Boy asked patiently.

“Oh, right!” Deadpool said, snapping his fingers. “Soundtrack music for this situation! What d'ya think?” 

“Hm,” Marvel Boy said, tilting his head thoughtfully. For a few moments they just walked down the white halls, no sounds but the faint echoes of their near-silent footsteps, the air still save for the eager anticipation of the mercenary next to him. “Right now? Probably Varien's 'Gunmetal Black.'” 

“Play it!” Deadpool said, clasping his hands together and looking at him with the wide, red and black eyes of his white mask. “Plaaaaaaay it!” 

“Aren't we trying to be inconspicuous?” Marvel Boy pointed out. 

“Eh, there's nobody here anyway,” Deadpool said, gesturing to the empty hall. “Plaaaay iiiiit!” He grinned gleefully behind the mask. “Just imagine any evil agents walking through the halls and then hearing suspenseful theme music! They'll shit their pants!” 

The mercenary had some fair arguments. “Fine,” Marvel Boy relented. Some music _would_ make the situation more enjoyable. 

He pulled out his StarkPod (which he'd advanced with Kree tech) and scrolled through the songs till he found the artist Varien, and then clicked on the song 'Gunmetal Black,' the song playing aloud through the small, portable speaker on his belt (also enhanced with Kree tech, so it had clear sound quality and a high volume capability). 

“Ooh, yes, this is _much_ better,” Deadpool grinned as the music started, flexing his itching fingers and giggling, a bounce in his step. “I feel like we're in a video game! I actually have a video game, didjou know that? Hehe. This song deserves some theatric sneaking.” He began sneaking 'theatrically,' like he sneaks in his video game, which was really just creeping forward lowly, knees bent, leaning forward, arms held out from his sides and swinging as lengthily as his steps. 

He looked, frankly, ridiculous. 

“You look ridiculous,” Marvel Boy told him.

“Kree: 120 for awesome music tastes,” Deadpool whispered, as if there was actually anybody to sneak up on. “But humans get bumped up to 33 cuz you suck at theatric sneaking.” He glanced at Marvel Boy, who was walking normally. “Actually, you get _minus_ one point for how awful your sneaking is. So you're back at 119.” 

“Your 'theatric sneaking,' as you call that, is highly impractical and a waste of energy,” Marvel Boy pointed out.

“Well, I've got energy to waste,” Deadpool said, continuing his 'highly impractical' sneaking. “Ooh, the music's slowing down, which means soon it's going to pick up, which means that soon something is going to happen—”

 

Just then, their comms crackled to life, and a voice that was vaguely identifiable as Fantomex's said: _“We're under—” crackle, “—ck! Repeat: we are—”crackle, “—attack! The Purifier's got—”crackle, “—entinels—”crack!_

“Fanty and Dom are being attacked by Sentinels?” Deadpool said, straightening up and drawing his swords. “Ooh, yay! I _love_ Sentinels!”

“Sentinels?” Noh-Varr asked. 

“Mutant-killing robots,” Deadpool explained. “Usually only go after mutants, which makes them easy—” As they turned a corner, they were met by a pair of what could only be Sentinels. 

However, unlike normal Sentinels, which were robotic and purple and the height of a several-story building, these Sentinels were only about eight feet tall, but they were sleek, dark, scaled, humanoid but their proportions weren't quite human. 

They made a strange noise as they seemed to size the two X-Force members up, a noise that was somewhere between a growl and a hiss and a whir. 

_“Oh boy,”_ Deadpool said, raising his swords (titanium cores and adamantium sheaths) to block the first attack, the Sentinel's arm swinging down at him, the force of the blow nearly knocking him to his knees. “These are _not_ normal Sentinels! Normal Sentinels are clunky and purple!” He rolled out from under the attack, leaping back up to his feet and swinging his swords around. “These look pretty futuristic.” The Sentinel knocked the sword away, breaking Deadpool's fingers in the process. “What d'ya think, Future Boy?” 

“They're significantly more advanced than any other technology in this time period,” Marvel Boy said as he dodged the blows from his Sentinel. “And— _nng,_ ” the Sentinel landed a blow to the Kree's face, and he rolled with the punch, whirling around and vaulting off the wall to land on the Sentinel's shoulders, “—they have an altered chronometric signature that suggests they originate from a completely different dimension.” 

“Like you!” Deadpool exclaimed as he tried to land more than a glancing blow on his Sentinel. “Except, y'know, evil and totally not-cool—” the Sentinel stabbed him through the gut with its blade-like arm. “Oy! _I was using that spleen you ding-a-linging dingus machine!_ ” 

“They appear to contain traces of organic material,” Marvel Boy noted as his Sentinel began heating up beneath him, becoming like living plasma, forcing the Kree to leap off.

“Does that mean you can eat them?” Deadpool asked, swinging his sword toward his Sentinel's neck.

“No...”

* * *

_**~Sometime previous~** _

* * *

X-Force had just returned from a difficult mission, and all of them were sporting injuries of some severity. 

Psylocke was in the best condition, with just some moderate bruises and cuts.

Deadpool had gotten his head chopped off, and was being carried inside by Cable in two separate pieces. He'd heal though, as soon as his head was reattached. 

Cable had an oozing bullet wound in his right arm, a bloodied nose, and had had much of the synth-skin torn off his face, so that now the metal was exposed. 

Domino was limping from a bullet wound to the leg. 

Fantomex was clutching a broken arm to his chest. 

Marvel Boy, however, had been hit especially hard—the Kree faction they'd been fighting had seemed to have something personal against him. 

Marvel Boy staggered into the base, clutching his side, his suit torn and bloodied, his skin turning black and blue with bruising. Some of his bones sounded like they were grinding against each other, broken or fractured.

“Guys, Noh is in a bad way...” Domino said faintly, blue eyes alarmed at the Kree's state. They'd left the scene in such a rush that none of them had been able to gauge each other's conditions, not even in the few minutes they'd been flying back in E.V.A.

“Juss eat...” Marvel Boy slurred, staggering into the kitchen and limping towards the fridge, reaching out a weak hand. “Juss eat and rest and I'll be okay...”

“I'll get the medical supplies,” Psylocke said, sprinting off.

Until she came back, there was nothing any of them could do for the Kree, who was currently kneeling in front of the open fridge door, eating. 

He ate two entire cartons of raw eggs—eggs, eggshells, and carton all. He ate all the leftover meat—including the bones. He ate all the fruit—including the cores and seeds and pits and peels. He ate everything in the fridge except for the plastic and metal containers. 

Then he moved to the cupboards. He ate walnuts and pistachios in their shells. He ate crackers and poptarts along with their cardboard boxes. He ate plain oats. Plain peanut butter. Plain jam. Plain honey. Drank plain maple syrup. Drank plain vanilla extract. Somehow managed to eat cinnamon without coughing it up.

He ate like he was possessed. 

The others could only watch. Startled. Awed. Sickened. 

When Psylocke came back with the medical supplies, she froze, watching as the Kree started tearing the paper off the outside of a chip bag after finishing the chips, eating the paper, too. 

They began tending to their own wounds. 

Psylocke disinfected and bandaged her few scrapes. Domino dug the bullet out of her leg, and then disenfected and wrapped the wound. Fantomex set his arm. Cable held Deadpool's head in place until it healed, and when Deadpool came back to life, he removed the bullet from Cable's arm, disinfecting and bandaging the injury because Cable was an idiot who hadn't taken care of himself before making sure that the Regeratin' Degenerate healed (and Deadpool _always_ healed). 

Marvel Boy just ate. And ate and ate and ate. And ate. And somehow managed to keep eating, despite the fact that it didn't seem like at all that… material… should be able to fit inside him. His stomach didn't even seem to be growing. 

“Uh... Noh?” Deadpool hazarded, when the Kree finally finished eating everything in the kitchen—including many things that had been in the trashcan—and collapsed back against a cabinet, panting. “You're not gonna throw that all up later, are you?” 

“No... I won't...” Marvel Boy said weakly, his bruises and cuts healing before their eyes. “I am capable of digesting any kind of organic material.” 

“Organic material, huh?” Deadpool said, brows raising behind his tattered mess of a mask. “Then explain the plastic spoons and cups.” 

“They're compostable—the cups are made of corn starch and the utensils are made out of potato starch,” Marvel Boy explained, already sounding and appearing significantly better. 

“Well, that's one way to get extra nutrition if you need it, I guess...” Psylocke remarked, glancing around the kitchen, which was clean of food but scattered with plastic trash. 

“That is disgusting,” Fantomex remarked.

“I think _I'm_ going to go vomit now,” Domino said, looking slightly green as she got up and left the room. “Excuse me...” 

“Seriously, you can digest _anything_ organic?” Deadpool asked him, looking fascinated.

“Yes,” Marvel Boy said.

“That... is gross,” Deadpool admitted, “but kind of awesome. Kree: 76. Humans: still 25.”  
Cable glanced around the mess of plastic trash that covered the kitchen, before turning to the Kree. “Just make sure you clean up after yourself, Noh-Varr,” he said.

He dragged Deadpool out of the room before the merc could start talking about entering the Kree into a professional eating competition.

* * *

**_~Now~_ **

* * *

“So—what are you thinking as theme music for this fight scene?” Deadpool asked as he and Marvel Boy danced deadly with the futuristic Sentinels that were possibly from another dimension.

“Knife Party's 'Destroy Them With Lazers,'” Marvel Boy said, repeatedly shooting his Sentinel with one of his lazer guns, managing to blast off one of the Sentinel's arms. 

“Ha! I _like_ the way you think!” Deadpool grinned, slashing at his Sentinel with his awesome swords—only, the Sentinel had gone all Colossus metallic on him, and his awesome titanium and adamntium swords weren't doing anything. 

So then he pulled out his plasma rifle (which he'd stolen from Nate—but it was his now!) and shot the Sentinel with that. 

The stupid partially-organic robot was unfazed, still attacking him relentlessly.

“Um. Can I borrow a Kree lazer?” Deadpool asked, dodging the Sentinel's blows. “My adamantium swords and stolen plasma rifle are doing jack shit against these mystique-esque Sentinel thingies. They're fuckin' X-Men _adaptoids._ ” 

Marvel Boy threw him one of the lazer guns. “Just give it back afterwards.” 

“Sure thing!” Deadpool grinned, tucking the plasma rifle away and catching the Kree lazer, flipping out of the way of the Sentinel and shooting it in the face. “ _Whoop!_ This is _awesome!_ ” The lazer was actually doing a considerable amount of damage. “Kree tech rocks! Kree: 120. Humans who built these Sentinels: -3,000 and a _fuck you_ , too.” 

“The way you count points is interesting,” Marvel Boy remarked, even as he got punched in the stomach by the Sentinel, which was surprsingly fast and definitely the most advanced tech he'd encountered in that dimension. 

The fight was proving challenging. Both of them were taking more damage than they were delivering. Marvel Boy already had to be careful not to slip on any of Deadpool's blood that was smeared over the floor.

And the building was faring even worse than they were—walls and ceilings smashed and melted and frozen.

“I can dance all day, I can dance all day, try me, try me! Come on! I mean, my heart's beatin', my heart's beatin', my hands are shakin', my hands are shakin', but I'm still shootin', and I'm still getting the head-shots, it's like _boom_ , head-shot! Boom, head-shot! _Boom, head-shot!_ ”

“'One Click Head Shot' by Feed Me?” 

“ _Boom!_ So, what, did you find my anti-Venom playlist or what?” 

“I also found your anti-Captain America playlist.” 

“ _Heh._ You should _see_ the way the guy blushes whenever I sing any of those! Ooh, nice one!” he complimented, as they switched Sentinels and Marvel Boy landed an impressive kick to the other Sentinel's head, knocking the adaptoid back several steps. “Let's see, they go Sunspot, they go Ice Man, they go Colossus, they can turn their arms into blades—who's power is that?—aaaand their faces open up like a scary flower and shoot plasma beams, I have no idea what that is—and, uh—that it? Disappointing. Ah well. Looks like you need this back—here, catch!” 

Marvel Boy grabbed the lazer gun that Deadpool threw him, able to blast away the Sentinel that had been repeatedly punching him in the face. He then had to toss away his goggles as they'd been badly cracked.

“Y'know, I've always wondered how I'd kill these X-Men guys,” Deadpool continued to talk as he led his Sentinel around by the nose, staying just barely out of reach, “just, like, as an intellectual challenge, of course—I mean, I've thought about how to kill a _lot_ of people, just in case—but turning them against each other seems to be a good course of action!”

They ended up back to back, and then leapt out of the way as one Sentinel blasted a searing beam of plasma at them and the other lunged forward with its blade-like arm, so that they stabbed and melted each other.

“ _Boom!_ ” Deadpool yelled, throwing his fists up as the Sentinels crumpled. “Who's the chump?!” 

He paused, his arms still in the air, waiting to see if they'd get up again. 

They didn't.

“Well, that was easy,” Deadpool said, brushing some of the still-wet blood off his already-healed body, before turning to the Kree and freezing. 

Marvel Boy's face was bruising up, and blood was trickling from the corner of his mouth. There was blood staining his white hair, and his Kree-metal suit couldn't hide the fact that some of his ribs were broken.

“Dude, are you alright?” Deadpool asked.

“It's fine,” Marvel Boy said, not even wincing as he popped a rib back into place. “I don't even feel it.” 

“Kid, I've _had_ injuries like that before,” Deadpool said in a don't-give-me-that-shit tone of voice. “I know _just how much_ they hurt. And your pain doesn't go away so quick.” 

“No, I really don't feel the pain,” Marvel Boy said, looking up at him with blackened, earnest green eyes. “I have complete control of my brain. I've rerouted the pain signals to my auditory cortex, so instead of feeling pain, I just hear music.” 

Deadpool stared at him flatly. “You're kidding.” 

“I don't kid,” Marvel Boy said seriously, holding his gaze, unflinching. “ _Ever_.” 

“You're _seriously_ turning your pain into music?” Deadpool demanded.

“Yes,” Marvel Boy said. “'Indestructible' by Disturbed and 'Eye Of The Tiger' by Survivor.” 

“At the same time?” 

“Yes,” Marvel Boy said again. “Unlike the brains of humans, Kree brains are fully capable of multitasking.” 

Deadpool just stared at him for a moment, jaw dropped behind his white and black mask. “Holy _handguns_ that's awesome!” he exclaimed. “Kree: 121. Humans: 33. I'd be jealous, but not feeling the pain doesn't mean you're not injured, and doesn't keep you from gettin' killed and stayin' dead.” He paused, before muttering to himself, “Okay, yeah, you're right, I'm totally jealous. That's not important right now! There are significantly more important things right now! Like Noh possibly dying!”

“The nanobots in my body are already working on repairing the wound,” Marvel Boy told him. “I won't die.” 

Behind the music blaring in his ears, Marvel Boy thought he maybe heard something ticking. 

“Good,” Deadpool said, looking at him. “Let me help you with that!” 

And then he whipped out his huge plasma rifle and blasting him up through the ceiling.

_“Wade, what the fuck?!”_ Marvel Boy cried as he was slammed through several layers of concrete, flailing through the air before falling and crashing into the ground, skidding along the wet grass and tearing it up, bones that had been starting to heal cracking again, his cuts and bruises worsening. Also, he was now covered in dirt.

As he sat up to look back at the hospital, parts of the building exploded violently against the night sky, and the rest of the building collapsed in on itself, several tons of rubble crashing down on where he had been with Deadpool, several levels down. 

“...Oh,” Marvel Boy said, realizing that Deadpool had just saved his life. He stood up, ignoring the music that throbbed louder in his ears as he jogged over to the debris. “Don't worry, Wade,” he said, even though there was no way the mercenary would hear him. “I got this.” 

He began lifting huge chunks of rubble out of the way as if they weighed nothing, trying to find the mercenary where he was buried down beneath it. 

Half an hour later, Marvel Boy lifted up a chunk of rubble and tossed it up out of the hole he'd dug down several levels, to see familiar black and white leg, however crushed and broken. 

A few more pieces of rubble moved, and Deadpool's entire body was exhumed. A smaller piece of rubble had landed in such a way to impale him through the chest, but almost as soon as it was removed, Deadpool took in a shuddering gasp, his eyes snapping open. “Marvel Boy!” he exclaimed, beaming at the Kree as if he'd been the one to invent tacos. “You saved me!” Deadpool pushed himself up into a sitting position and then tried to stand up, only for his legs to crumple beneath him. “ _Nnnng._ Stupid legs breaking on me...” He glared at his legs, which were bent at about thirteen different strange angles. “Traitors...” 

He set his legs, and they creaked and crackled as the bones and flesh realigned, mending.

Marvel Boy offered him a hand, which Deadpool took, and he pulled the mercenary to his feet.“I promised I'd use my super-strength to get you out of any such dilemmas, didn't I?”

* * *

_**~Sometime previous~** _

* * *

“Noh!” came Wade's excited voice, along with the vibrations of his bounding into the common room where Noh-Varr was sitting cross-legged on the floor, working on a sonic-disruption temporal detector. “Have you ever arm-wrestled someone?” 

“No,” Noh-Varr said, glancing up at the mercenary. Wade wasn't wearing his mask, which Noh-Varr was starting to theorize meant that he was in a good mood, since whenever he wore his mask around when they weren't on mission, the others seemed to be more careful around him, no matter how much he was smiling and talking cheerfully. 

“We are going to fix that right now!” Wade declared, grabbing Noh-Varr's arm and pulling him to his feet and over to the table, sitting down and gesturing for the Kree to take a seat as well. 

Noh-Varr sat down in the chair hesitantly. “How does this work?” 

Wade grabbed his right hand in his own so that their elbows were bent and resting on the table, their forearms perpendicular to the ceiling.“Just, yeah, like this, and then we try to push each other's arms down against the table,” Wade explained oh-so-eloquently. (Noh-Varr was actively trying to use sarcasm whenever possible, since he still had trouble with it, and he always learned best by doing.)

“This is a competition of strength,” Noh-Varr said, just to make sure he had the right idea.

“Yup!” Wade grinned. “On five, okay? One. Two. Five!” 

Wade strained the muscles of his arm, trying to push the Kree's arm down, while Noh-Varr just sat there staring at him, arm not moving. The human, despite being superhuman, really wasn't that strong.

After letting Wade strain for a few more moments, Noh-Varr easily pushed his arm down against the table. “That was it?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Holy _fuck_ you're strong!” Wade exclaimed, looking down at his arm, which Noh-Varr was still holding down against the table (he was unsure of when he was supposed to let Wade's arm back up), before looking back up at the Kree boy, brown eyes wide. “I mean, I saw you carrying all that stuff like it weighed _nothing_ , so I knew you were strong, but _damn_ —rematch!” he called, and Noh-Varr took that as a signal to let his arm back up. “Just in case it was a fluke!”

“It wasn't,” Noh-Varr stated.

“Humor me!” Wade said, making what Noh had heard termed as 'puppy-dog-eyes,' which, despite Wade's sore-covered face, seemed to work at least somewhat on everybody else on the team except Noh himself. He'd been told that his 'ability to register cuteness' was so sub par that it was 'down in the Marianas Trench' (Domino's words when he hadn't reacted, or seen the point of, all the cat videos that the rest of the team was watching on the TV via the internet). “Please!” 

Noh-Varr shrugged. “I'm not going to reject a chance to show off,” he said, clasping hands with Wade again.

“On 'go,' this time,” Wade said. “On your mark. Get—go!” 

This time Noh-Varr didn't even wait before pushing Wade's arm down to the table top. 

“Mother _fucker!_ ” Wade swore.

“Not a fluke,” Noh-Varr said, letting the merc's arm up.

“Evidently not,” Wade said, sighing. Then he brightened, jumping up out of his chair and running out of the room down the hallway, shouting, “Hey, Priscilla! Get yo' smokin' hot ass in here!”

“I'm not sure whether to take such comments from you as compliments or rudeness,” Noh-Varr could hear Nathan reply in response, as they both came back towards the room.

“They're compliments—definitely compliments—”Wade was saying as they entered, “because I suck at giving sweet ones, but I want you to know that I find you insanely attractive despite the fact that you're old.” 

“I'm not _that_ old,” Nathan said as he sat down in the chair, across the table from Noh-Varr, that Wade was pushing him towards.

“Well, we both know who the pretty one is in this relationship, and it's definitely not _me_ , so,” Wade shrugged.

“Wade,” Nathan started, expression pulling in an emotion Noh-Varr had yet been able to identify, “You know that's not—”

“I know, Nate, I know,” Wade said, patting the mutant's shoulder and smiling softly, before he grinned excitedly again. “Now you need to arm-wrestle Noh! But you guys are wrestling with your left arms. No TK the first round, Priscilla.” 

“Why are we doing this?” Noh-Varr asked, even as he grabbed Nathan's metal hand, and they set their elbows down on the table.

“For my boyfriend's entertainment, evidently,” Nathan said dryly.

“For my _curiosity,_ ” Wade corrected. “So it doesn't kill me.” He grinned, leaning over Nathan's shoulder to nuzzle his face against the mutant's clean-shaven jaw. “ _Meow._ ” 

“Wade,” Nathan said.

“Right, of course,” Wade grinned, pulling back and raising a fist. “On one! Three!” He held up four fingers. “Two!” He held up two fingers. “One!” He held up three fingers.

There were a few moments as Nathan tried to press Noh-Varr's hand down against the table—he was certainly stronger than Wade—before Noh-Varr decided to exert his own strength and push the techno-organic arm down. 

“Is that all you got?” he asked, raising a dark eyebrow. 

“Well,” Nathan said, sitting back in his chair to regard Noh-Varr, “when any of our missions require heavy-lifting, I know who I'm going to make do the work.” 

“Oh, hey!” Wade exclaimed, grinning and patting the mutant on the shoulder, looking… proud? Amused? Emotions were very important to humans and how they interacted, and Noh-Varr still had trouble interpreting them, which could be incredibly frustrating. Humans seemed to have far more nuances in their emotions than did Kree. Nothing was simple with humans. “Nate, you're learning to take defeat _gracefully!_ ” 

“What can I say?” Nathan said, his lips twitching. Whether that was a good twitch or a bad twitch, Noh-Varr didn't know. “This old dog can learn a few new tricks.” 

“You know, the cat and dog metaphor really works when you think about the fact that you chased me all around the world,” Wade said in a way that could probably be described as 'musingly,' tilting his head.

Nathan's lips did that twitching thing again. “I guess it does.” 

That made Wade grin for some reason.

Noh-Varr looked back and forth between them. They were both smiling. He thought that Wade looked happy, though, while that Nathan looked more…. Sad? Noh-Varr wasn't sure. Just because humans smiled didn't mean they were happy, as Betsy had tried explaining to him before. He didn't understand why anybody would smile if they weren't happy. 

“You two are very puzzling,” he told them frankly.

“Don't worry, alien boy, you're not alone in that feeling,” said Neena, walking around from where she'd been standing behind him, and had been watching them silently for several minutes. “ _I'm_ puzzled, as well, and I've know both of them for a long time, now.” 

“Well, Nate is Mr. Mysterious,” Wade said, gesturing Nathan, before jerking his hands at himself, continuing without pause: “and I am an enigma and a paradox wrapped up in a cancerous tortilla and covered in violence sauce, sprinkled with extra helpings of crazy and deep-fried in a painful and miserable past. Which would make me a Deadpool Enchilada-Chimichanga!” 

Noh-Varr stared at him, trying to puzzle that out. He understood the meaning of all the words, but… in context, the words didn't make _sense._

“That was almost poetic, Wade,” Nathan said, and his lips twitched again. 

Noh-Varr tried to stare at the mutant's eyes, since Betsy had told him that looking into people's eyes could reveal whether the emotion was positive or negative, since when the emotion was positive, people's eyes supposedly lit up, but when the emotions were negative, people's eyes apparently tended to darken. Except that lust was an exception to that rule, apparently. (But Noh-Varr could always tell lust, because he could _smell_ lust. Lust had a very distinct chemical smell.)

Noh-Varr tried to see whether Nathan's eyes lit up or darkened, but his left eye was always lit up, and his right eye always looked dark in comparison. Noh-Varr didn't even understand what he was supposed to be looking for—the pigment of someone's iris never changed color; the color only appeared to change given the colors around it and the brain's interpretation of the comparison. As far as Noh-Varr was concerned, eyes only got darker when the pupils widened, and only got lighter when the pupils contracted. 

Betsy had also told him to try to see if there were crinkles at the corner of someone's eyes, but the synth-skin on the left side of Nathan's face was slightly off from the flesh of the right side of his face.  
So Noh-Varr really didn't know. Kree were very different from humans. In many ways, including how they emoted. 

Kree didn't fake anything. Kree didn't hide anything. Kree emotions were pure and unadulterated, intense and unmitigated, clear and unambiguous. 

Human emotions were… muddled. Murky.

And they didn't. Make. Sense. 

“Well, this pro bono X-Force work doesn't pay very well, so I was thinking getting a day job as a poet,” Wade was saying. Wade was also especially hard to try to read because of the way his sores marred his face and always seemed to be in a different spot each day, causing the skin of his face to pinch differently each day when he emoted. “My poetry collection will be published in a book entitled: 'Duct Tape Chimichangas of Bamboozling Violence and an Occasional Sphincter or Duodenum or Twenty-Seven.'” 

Noh-Varr blinked, trying to make sense of that. Again, he knew the meaning of all the words, but… again, the arrangement of the words seemed to render them meaningless.

Noh-Varr looked at the others for help in how to interpret the mercenary's statement.

Nathan's lips were curved upwards, while Neena was staring at Wade with one eyebrow higher than the other, lips slightly parted and twisted in something that wasn't a smile but also wasn't a frown. 

“Tell me,” Noh-Varr asked them, “is that one of the things that I don't understand because I'm Kree, or did neither of you understand it as well?” 

“It's not just you, Noh,” Neena said, her face still pulled in the unidentifiable expression, which she was still directing at Wade. 

Nathan just shook his head, chuckling.

“Don't worry—nobody gets any points for that one,” Wade said, lips pulling upwards in a Noh-had-no-idea-how-genuine smile. “Hey, has anybody else noticed that I'm currently the only one in this room whose name doesn't start with the letter N? No?” He didn't wait for an answer, before turning to Noh-Varr and continuing in the same breath: “Now, you and Nate have to arm-wrestle again, but this time he can use his telekenesis to augment his strength!” He gestured for them to grab left hands again, which they did. “Now: wrestle!” 

Noh-Varr blinked in surprise as Nathan pushed his arm back slightly—being able to use telekenesis made the mutant _significantly_ stronger—before Noh-Varr pushed back, pushing down Nathan's metal, telekenetically-enhanced arm with some—but not a considerable amount of—effort.

Nathan stared at him for several moments, and Noh-Varr had absolutely no fucking idea what the expression was. None. Zilch. He was at a loss. Clueless.

Which wasn't that unusual. So, like usual, he deigned to ignore the fact that he felt clueless, and remind himself that it didn't really matter. 

Humans were an entirely different species. He really couldn't be blamed for not understanding them.

“...I would have been able to beat you easily a few weeks ago,” Nathan said finally.

“Yeah, before I stabbed you in the brain, you could have won in an arm wrestle with _Galactus,_ ” Wade said quickly, and Noh-Varr couldn't tell what he was emoting, either. “But _seriously,_ Noh,” Wade said, turning back to him, “how strong _are_ you?!” 

“Normal Kree can lift two tons,” Noh-Varr stated. “I am _significantly_ stronger than a normal Kree.” The truth was, that Noh-Varr didn't know how strong he was. He'd never measured his limit, and since he and each of the insect-enhanced Kree on _The Marvel_ had all been augmented with the abilities of different insects, each of them with different enhanced genetics to any enhanced Kree before them, their abilities hadn't been fully known and recorded. There were no facts and statistics. Especially since several of them had been young, and their abilities were still maturing. 

“I can lift up to ten tons with my metal arm if I'm augmenting my strength with my telekenesis,” Nathan told him. “And you're stronger than that.” 

“Cockroach DNA Enhanced Kree: 78,” Wade said, seeming cheerful about it. This 'point game' of Wade's was just one of many, many things that Noh-Varr didn't understand in this crazy world. “Humans: still 25.” Then his expression sobered, and he said to Noh-Varr, sound far more serious than he had moments before: “Noh, if I ever get trapped under over a dozen tons of rubble, I'm expecting you to get me out, okay?” 

“Of course,” Noh-Varr said, because it went without question that he would do whatever he could to help his teammates. Wade's seriousness about this confused him, though, because even though Wade had said 'if,' the sentiment had sounded more like a 'when.' So Noh-Varr asked: “Is you getting trapped under over a dozen tons of rubble likely to happen?” 

“With _me?_ ” Wade said, shrugging his shoulders. “Quite possibly.”

Noh-Varr didn't know what to make of that, either. He decided it didn't matter. 

He'd deal with that situation if—when?—he came to it.

* * *

_**~Now~** _

* * *

Deadpool staggered on his broken legs, Marvel Boy putting an arm around his waist to support him.

“Um, Noh?” Deadpool said, looking at him concernedly. “Did you realize that half your hair is burnt off? Including one of your eyebrows?” 

Marvel Boy ran a hand back over his head, the missing and singed white hair. “I didn't realize,” he said. “Give me a moment and I'll have it fixed.” 

Deadpool watched in rapt fascination as Marvel Boy's hair—including his eyebrow—grew back. One couldn't even tell he'd had his hair burned off at all.

“...You just grew your hair back,” Deadpool said, stunned. 

“Yes,” Marvel Boy agreed as he began helping the mercenary to climb out of the deep hole he'd dug down into the rubble. 

“By force of will,” Deadpool said, pausing to lean against a large piece of concrete and hit his legs to try to make the bones realign faster.

“Yes,” Marvel Boy said, waiting up for him.

“Y'know, I used to be able to do that with fingers and stuff,” Deadpool said as he forced himself to clamber after the Kree, still talking as if his bones weren't still crackling eerily and nearly giving out on him every single step. “Then my healing factor got improved, and now my limbs grow back whether I want them to or not! But hair is the one thing I can _never_ grow back, no matter _how_ much I will it to. So, Humans: 34, but Kree: 123.” 

“The way you score points makes _no_ sense,” Marvel Boy informed him as he caught the mercenary before he buckled to the ground again. “And you already knew that I could grow my hair on will.” 

“I did?” Deadpool asked, blinking and scratching at the back of his head through the mask even as he tried to stand up without support. He tried to take a step. 

He crumpled back into the Marvel Boy, gripping the Kree's shoulders and muttering in frustration: “Stupid fucking useless legs!”

“Remember my country phase?” Marvel Boy prompted, an eyebrow—the one that he'd recently grown back—raised. 

The red eyes of Deadpool's mask widened. “Oh _right_. Your _country_ phase. I think I blocked it out. It was _traumatizing._ ” He shuddered. 

Marvel Boy was glaring at him.

“Well, the fact that you were playing country music all the time was traumatizing—the beard wasn't traumatizing,” Deadpool amended, grinning behind the mask. “The beard was just hilarious.” 

“Still,” Marvel Boy said, glaring furiously, split lip curling with anger—he really looked plain awful with all the lacerations and bruising. It was really a miracle he could still stand, and that he could hold the mercenary up, nonetheless. The injuries made his glaring even worse. “You didn't have to destroy all my country vinyls. You could have just asked politely and given your reason for why you didn't want to hear my country music.”

“That wasn't me that destroyed your country vinyls!” Deadpool protested indignantly. “Why do you think that was me?! My best guess is that it was Domino.” 

Marvel Boy was still glaring at him (though it apparently hadn't crossed his mind to just drop the mercenary, since he was really the only thing keeping Deadpool standing), and Deadpool raised his palms placatingly, insisting: _“I'm serious!”_

* * *

_**~Sometime previous~** _

* * *

Noh-Varr wasn't just clean-shaven—his face was smooth like he couldn't even grow a beard if he'd wanted to. Which was probably a good thing, since if his white hair made him look older than his features would suggest, a beard would make him look _really_ old. So if he'd started to grow a beard, then everybody would have noticed. 

Which is why it struck everybody by surprise when they walked into the common room (aka Marvel Boy's Workshop, Room 1) and found him working on some crazy alien tech project (as usual), wearing headphones (as usual), nodding his head to the beat (as usual), and sporting at least a week's worth of beard (NOT as usual). 

“Wha' da fuck?!” Wade exclaimed eloquently. He pointed accusingly at the Kree, stating, “You did _not_ have a beard yesterday!” 

Looking up at them from where he was working on the floor, Noh-Varr beamed as he moved his headphones down around his neck, a faint twanging music becoming audible. “I have discovered the joy of country!” he said brightly. “Gram Parsons is my hero. I also love Johnny Cash.” 

Wade looked at him for a moment. And then he burst out laughing, bending over and clutching his stomach. “You look like a bad take on a Father Christmas rerun!” he gasped out between raucous belly laughs, unable to look at the Kree without dissolving further into hysterical guffaws.

Noh-Varr watched him blankly, and Wade laughed so hard he fell down onto the floor, rolling around and positively _howling_ with laughter.

Nathan was glaring down at the mercenary, which just made Wade laugh impossibly harder. He sounded like he was choking to death. 

But he had a healing factor, so nobody was particularly concerned about him.

However, Neena was looking concerned about Noh-Varr as she walked over to him and knelt down next to him, putting a hand against his bearded cheek. “How long are you going to grow out that... beard...?” 

“As long as it feels appropriate,” he answered with a shrug. Then he smiled through the white bristle. “Country music is awesome!”

“But you're all scratchy now!” Neena protested. “You're not going to get any kisses from any girls like that, you know.”

“I'm sure they could proposition Jean-Phillipe. I think he's feeling desperate since he hasn't scored with Betsy yet,” Noh-Varr said. 

Neena turned to look over her shoulder at the faux-French supersoldier, who was glaring at the Kree, arms crossed. “I am not that _superficiel,_ ” he spat out. 

Betsy was pointedly not looking at him.

“And besides, he never takes that mask off,” Neena pointed out, sitting on the floor and gesturing to Jean-Phillipe, who was, as aways, wearing his white and black suit and the mask that covered his entire face except for his eyes. “He might have as much of a beard as you beneath that thing!” 

“I think it would be enjoyable to visit Nashville,” Noh-Varr mused. 

Neena face-palmed. 

“Hee, hehehe, heh,” Wade snickered, managing to push himself into a sitting position, tears of mirth glistening on his face, lips cracked and bleeding from all his grinning. “Humans earn a point! Humans: 8. Kree: still 49.” 

Jean-Phillipe groaned as he flopped down on the coach. “Though I'm loath to ask, my curiosity has gotten the best of me: care to explain _why_ we've earned a point just now?” 

“Nate wins the beard contest,” Wade said, pointing up at the huge mutant. 

Everybody looked at Nathan. 

“Wade, I don't have a beard,” Nathan stated evenly. “I've _never_ grown a beard.” 

“Untrue!” Wade cried, leaping to his feet and jabbing the larger man in the chest. “When I was chasing yourself across dimensions to try to find you after you disappeared while fighting the Skornn, and eventually found you as a baby, but not until later, the _first_ dimension I visited you were Apocalypse's horseman _War_ —”

Nathan looked stunned. 

“—and the _second_ dimension I ended up in, you had long hair and a wizard robe and a beard and insisted on being called _'Brother Nathan,'_ and you'd turned the world into a violenceless paradise where nobody could have so much as a _stomach ache_ because you couldn't stand to see anyone suffer! Also, you totally had a beard.” 

Nathan looked... even more stunned. 

“What? I never told you that?” Wade asked, frowning as he took a step back. 

“No,” Nathan said, “you didn't.” 

“Huh,” Wade said, before he shrugged. “Well, it was awful and I wanted to chop your head off—except your stupid flying bots had destroyed my weapons—and I liked the Apocalypse dimension better.” 

“You _would,_ ” Neena snorted.

“In the next dimension,” Wade continued, watching Nathan's face, lips spasming like he was trying not to laugh, “the techno-organic baby had won—cuz apparently that dimension had had a weak-ass version of you—and then spread to take over the entire world and make everyone and everything 'whole,' because that was your dream, and it was a baby and didn't know any better.” 

Nathan looked... well, his expression was absolutely hilarious, frankly, and Wade could no longer keep from laughing at him. 

“And then in the next dimension you were a cute little baby created the 'old-fashioned way' by Mr. Sinister—and I quote: 'a pinch of genetic material from a young man in _Hartford_ here, a dash form a _mystery woman_ there...' as his hope for a future of perfectly mapped genetic superiority. And that was the real you!” Wade stated gleefully. 

“Of course,” Nathan managed after a moment. “You can't remember what anyone tells you half the time, but you remember that word for word.” 

Wade was reduced to hysterical laughter again, lurching off balance from the strength of his guffaws. He would have fallen over onto the floor if Nathan hadn't caught him, and he would have kept laughing if Nathan hadn't kissed him, effectively shutting him up. 

“At least Nate has a way to actually get him to shut up,” Neena said. 

“Does the dimension-traveling Wade was talking about happen to this team often?” Noh-Varr asked curiously. 

“I hope not,” Jean-Phillipe grumbled. 

“Probably,” Betsy said. 

“A fair amount,” Neena shrugged. 

Noh-Varr looked rather happy about that fact. “I hope we come to a dimension where Gram Parsons still lives.” 

The three of them stared at him. 

Oblivious, Noh-Varr added, “I also have hopes of meeting Johnny Cash.” 

Wade and Nathan had stopped kissing and were now also staring at him. 

“Just as long as you don't play any of that country shit out loud,” Wade said, his arms still around Nathan's neck as he leaned against the larger man. “I hate the country and its whiny, twangy music about trucks and icky love and _cows._ ” 

Noh-Varr looked completely taken aback. “How can you not like _country music?!_ ” 

“I don't like it, either,” Nathan said, flesh hand still resting on Wade's hip. 

“Same here,” Neena said, looking at Noh-Varr and telling him frankly, “country music sucks.” 

“I echo this popular sentiment,” Jean-Phillipe said, pushing Neena's leg off the other two couch cushions so that he could sit down, only for her to promptly put her leg on his lap. “Country music is highly unrefined and I refuse on principle to ever visit Nashville.” 

Noh-Varr was looking so incredibly horrified—far more horrified than they'd ever seen him: his green eyes wide and mouth dropped open—that Wade started laughing again. Nathan had to hold the mercenary up. 

Noh-Varr looked at Betsy desperately. 

She shrugged, brushing strands of dark hair over her shoulder. “Country music is alright. I listen to it sometimes.” 

“ _Thank_ you!” Noh-Varr exclaimed. 

“I... guess not all country music is _that_ bad...” Jean-Phillipe amended. 

Despite Nathan's best efforts to keep Wade from collapsing to the floor in his hysterics, Wade collapsed to the floor in hysterics. 

“Why the _hell_ does he find all this so funny?!” Noh-Varr demanded, frustrated, glaring at the laughing mercenary. 

Wade sobered immediately and sat up like a shot. He gaped at the Kree. “We actually managed to annoy him,” he said, amazed. “We actually managed to _finally_ annoy him. I think we humans deserve a point for that. Or multiple points.” He looked up at Nathan. “Nate, how many points do you think we get for finally annoying the unannoyable Kree alien?” 

Nathan looked down at him with a twitch of his lips, saying amusedly: “At least fifteen.”

Wade nodded, straightening his head to tell the group: “Humans: 23. Kree: still 49.” 

“I am highly disappointed in all of you,” Noh-Varr said haughtily, going back to work on his project. “You all have horrible taste in music.” He put his headphones back on and set to work, ignoring them. 

“And you have horrible taste in music _and_ in facial hair,” Neena retorted. 

“I don't think he can hear you,” Nathan said, still amused. 

“Nate?” Wade asked, tilting his head back to look up at the other man again, expression incredibly sober.

“Yes, Wade?” 

“Don't grow a beard.”

* * *

_**~Now~** _

* * *

When Marvel Boy, injured as he was, finally managed to half-drag, half-carry Deadpool and his broken legs up out of the hole, they found an entire legion of Purifers, tanks, and security robots waiting for them.

“Aww, fuck it,” Deadpool said. “We're surrounded and all my limbs and deadly extensions of limbs are pretty broken right now.” (He was even more upset about his crushed guns than about his crushed legs.)

“I could try to get us out,” Marvel Boy offered as he surveyed the troops, mentally calculating numbers, how much firepower they had and how much his own wounds, which were fairly severe, would slow him down (the numbers didn't look good), “but—”

_“Hands on your head!”_ was shouted at them. _“Get down on the ground! Now!”_

“Kid, you'll kill yourself if you try,” Deadpool said, patting the Kree on the arm, before slowly starting to lower himself down onto his knees—only to lurch forward and catch himself on his hands. “Nah, it's cool, we'll just have to let them capture us. I do this kinda thing all the time—just follow my lead, okay?” 

Marvel Boy sneered, but followed Deadpool's example, lying down on the ground and putting his hands on the back of his head. 

“I'm gonna say and do some stuff that's not gonna make any sense,” Deadpool told him quietly as the troops started swarming them, “but it will work out in the end. Trust me?”

“As far as I can throw you,” Marvel Boy replied as one of the Purifiers grabbed him and yanked him roughly to his feet. 

Deadpool was pulled up roughly as well, then kicked back down when he wasn't able to move fast enough, and one of the soldiers ended up dragging him—but he just grinned at the Kree. “Which is pretty damn far, if I remember correctly.”

* * *

_**~The previous mission~** _

* * *

X-Force had been too late—the planes carrying bombs that the Purifiers were going to drop on the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters had already taken off, and were growing distant fast.

“Somebody needs to get onto the planes,” Deadpool said, turning to the group. “Can anybody on this team fly? Or teleport?” He paused, looking between them, before smacking himself in the forehead. “Why don't we have any fliers or teleporters?!” 

“Because we don't need them,” Marvel Boy said, stepping forward. “I'll throw you.” 

“Ooh, Fastball Special!” Deadpool grinned, bounding over to him. “Let's do this thang!”

Marvel Boy grabbed the mercenary by the straps on his back.

“Can you really throw him that far, Marvel Boy?” Cable asked.

“Just watch,” Marvel Boy said. 

With that, he spun around to gain momentum, before launching Deadpool into the air like a rocket headed for outer space.

“FOR THE FREEDOM TO PLAY BASEBALL AND ITS WIMPY EUROPEAN COUSIN!” Deadpool shouted as he soared through the air, fists held in front of him like Superman. 

The rest of X-Force watched as Deadpool became a dot in the sky, and—landed on the plane.

“AND THE KREE HITS A HOMERUN!” Deadpool shouted, holding onto the wing of the plane and pulling himself to the body, holding on with one hand and pulling a katana with the other, cutting his way into the plane. 

Screams followed his entry, and a few moments later the plane turned itself back around and flew back to the airport where X-Force was waiting, landing (and not crashing, much to Domino and Fantomex's surprise). 

“What was the name of that game again?” Deadpool asked as he hopped out of the plane and jogged over to them. “Kind of like a cockroach, but not...”

“Cricket?” Cable suggested.

“THAT'S IT!” Deadpool exclaimed, pointing at his beau with a grin, before giggling to himself: “ _Hehe, rhyme._ ” Back to a conversational tone of voice, he nodded at Marvel Boy, saying, “I call the Kree on my team if we ever play baseball or cricket! That was one _hell_ of a fastball special. We should challenge Wolverine and Colossus to a Fastball Special tournament. Although Colossus can be pretty lame—although he's actually rather awesome in my movie.” He threw his fists into the air in a V, grinning. “Maximum effort!” Lowering his arms, he began stroking the chin of his mask thoughtfully. “But if the Colossus in this universe is feeling lame, we could always get Ultimate Spider-Man (from the TV show) and have _him_ do it with Wolverine. _Ooh!_ ” He practically lit up with an idea. “Arm wrestle between Marvel Boy and Spider-Man! _Will the insect or the arachnid win?_ This needs to happen. We could make a TV show. We could—”

“There's another plane,” Marvel Boy interrupted him.

“What—” Wade started, before Marvel Boy grabbed him again, swinging him around and launching him into the air after the second plane. “AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!” Deadpool shouted as he soared through the air fast enough to rip off any normal person's skin. “WARN A GUY, WILL YA? ACTUALLY NEVERMIND THIS IS REALLY FUN! WHEEEEEEEEEE!” Fists in front of him, he yelled, “FOR DESTINY AND PANCAKES!” 

Landing on the plane, Deadpool cut his way in again, exterminating the pesky Purifier pests (“Alliteration!”) and turning the plane around, landing it right next to the first one. 

“Haha yes!” Deadpool cried as he jumped out of the plane, looking like someone who had just won a gold medal at the Olympics. “I _rock_ at fling and landing planes! That, man,” he gestured at the two planes that were perfectly side by side, “takes _skill._ ” 

Fantomex, Psylocke, and Domino, and Cable were all checking the two landed planes, so it was just Marvel Boy standing there waiting for him.

Marvel Boy nodded back towards the sky. “There's one more plane,” he said.

“Throw me!” Deadpool cried, throwing himself at the Kree, who grabbed him and swung him around in one fluid movement, sending him sailing at incredible speeds through the air again. 

“WOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” Deadpool cried, this time holding both his katanas in front of him so that he could use them to catch himself on the plane. “FOR THE FASTBALL SPECIAL! AND FOR MY MOVIE THAT CAME OUT IN FEBRUARY!” 

He would later swear that Marvel Boy had thrown him so fast that he actually broke the sound barrier.

Hacking his way into the third plane, Deadpool turned that one around and landed it right next to the second one, so that all three planes were lined up in a row. 

“THAT. WAS. AWESOME!” Wade declared as he practically danced out of the third game, grinning hugely behind his mask, excited like a little kid. He looked at the Kree eagerly. “Can we do that again?!”

“There are no more planes,” Marvel Boy informed him.

“Only you, Wade,” Cable said, coming up to put a hand on the mercenary's shoulder, a small, fond smile on his lips. “Only you.”

“Let's go get the bombs!” Deadpool said, grabbing Cable's hand and dragging him towards the third plane. 

“I got them,” Marvel Boy said, suddenly appearing in front of them, setting the _DANGER: EXPLOSIVE_ crates down on the ground, next to the other crates that Psylocke and Cable had telekenetically carried out of the other two planes. 

Halting so fast that he practically threw himself backwards against Cable, Deadpool squeaked in surprise, before he started laughing.

Marvel Boy looked at Cable questioningly. Cable just shook his head, smiling slightly (confusedly), down at the merc who was doubled over and cracking up. 

“ _Adrenalin!_ ” Deadpool sing-songed, still giggling. “That was _totally_ like flying! I think I want to own a jetpack. Oh, and the Kree get two points for that Fastball Special, because it was _awesome!_ So, Kree: 65! Humans: still 25. The game cricket should totally be renamed cockroach. But then probably nobody would play. Do people like crickets? Crickets. Crickets. Synonym for silence. Silence is not as cool as violence. Violence for science!” Deadpool was snickering to himself. “What, science for violence? Does that make more sense? That was really fucking far! You know what that means, right?” Deadpool jumped to his feet and clapped his hands giddily. “ _Yes!_ ”

That time, Cable looked questioningly at Marvel Boy. 

Marvel Boy just shrugged.

* * *

_**~Now~** _

* * *

“Well, this is sucky,” Deadpool said as he and Marvel Boy were shoved and dragged into some kind of science lab dungeon, with cells lining one side of the room. In the center of the room was a metal table with restraints, along with various rolling tables of surgical and torture equipment. “Are you evil dudes going to torture us for information and/or just for kicks?” 

“Yes,” one of the evil dudes said.

[Don't you love how they don't even deny the accusation that they're evil?]

“You are _gene trash,_ ” the evil dude said, trying to be all threatening and scary and showing off how huge and muscular and shit he was by grabbing Deadpool by the neck and lifting him off the ground, snarling into his face (and holy _damnation_ [Dam Nation? A nation of dams!] did the guy need a breath mint or twenty-five!), “and a danger to the _good humans_ of this world.”

[Read: a danger to the _Master Race._ Cuz they're totally American Nazis.] 

“Aww _fuck,_ ” Deadpool said, as one of the evil thug dudes began dragging Marvel Boy towards the surgical table, “I _hate_ being tortured! Even though I've gotten _lots_ of practice at it,” he started babbling, gesturing to the disfigured skin visible through the shreds of white and black mask. “I mean, you see this face, right? This face is the product of _years_ of torture. I am _amazing_ at not cracking. You really shouldn't even bother to torture me. But this kid here?” He nodded at Marvel Boy, who was staring at him in confusion. “Look at how _young_ and innocent he is—never mind the white hair and the murderous gleam in his eye. He is far less experienced than me and he will _totally_ crack under torture.” 

[Wait, _what the hell are you doing?_ We _like_ Noh! We don't want him to get tortured!]

The evil dudes all looked at the Kree, who regarded them calmly despite having his arms shackled behind his back, having three guards that were _way_ bigger than him and kept shoving him around and jabbing him with tazers, and looking like Death fleshed over, burned in a frying pan that tipped into the fire, and then attacked by a sentient cheese grater. 

“I dare you to _try,_ ” Marvel Boy told the evil dudes, a malicious glint in his green eyes.

The evil dudes frowned at him in consideration. Or, you know, what counted as consideration in the slow, clunking gears in their heads that somehow passed for human brains. 

“Eh, he puts on airs, but inside you can bet he's _totally_ scared out of his wits right now,” Deadpool assured the evil dudes. “He's usually very laconic, but I bet he's so scared right now that once you torture him into talking he'll just _ramble_ at you.” Deadpool paused for a moment, and the irony sunk like—well, like iron in water, frankly, so he quickly continued: “You always wanna torture the guys who are gonna talk easy, if you want answers. And the guys who will scream, if you want to relish in their pain. I've never heard the kid scream, but I bet he can scream _really well._ You should totally test it out!” he continued rambling on enthusiastically.

[Fuck you, Wade.]

“I mean, look at 'im, he's already injured!” Deadpool continued, nodding to the Kree, whose bleeding, bruised face was twisted up (in confusion, but it almost looked) like he was in pain. “You just gotta hope that he's not already at his pain tolerance level, cuz then you can't make them in any _more_ pain, and then you can't get anything out of them cuz they know the pain won't stop, so you'll never get answers out of them and they're useless. Usually the best torture victims are uninjured or only injured very minimally, but I'm sure he has a high enough pain tolerance that he hasn't reached the already-broken part, so you can still break him if you try hard enough.” 

Deadpool tilted his head thoughtfully (well, as full of thoughts as Deadpool ever was, anyway). “Even if he claims that he doesn't feel pain, but I'm _sure_ that he's lying about that, and that he just has a really good poker face and _that's_ why he looks so serene despite how much he's bleeding and stuff. And I mean, even though I have a healing factor and you guys can hurt me and hurt me and hurt me over and over again, I'll just heal from all of it, so it's totally pointless to torture me.” He lifted one of his previously broken legs and shook it to demonstrate the fact that, _wow,_ his previously broken legs were all healed now! Would you look at that?!

[Oh. OH. I get it.]

“Hey, hey, what are you doing?!” Deadpool shouted as the evil dudes nodded at each other, and the thugs gripping the merc's arms shoved him towards the metal table, while the evil guys who'd been about to strap Marvel Boy down to the table instead threw him into one of the cells along the wall that were barred with adamantium. The cell was just across the room from the metal table, giving Marvel Boy and complete view of the scene.

“Why are you taking _me?!_ ” Deadpool cried. _“Are you guys idiots!? No! Don't torture me! Motherfuckers!”_

The evil dudes pushed the mercenary down onto the torture table, some of them holding him down while others started securing the restraints to hold him down. 

_“I told you not to torture me!”_ came his ignored plea. 

[Wade? You are a genius. Hoodwinking the idiots into torturing you instead of Noh? GENIUS.]

“Y'know, 'hoodwink' is a fun word,” Deadpool said to himself as they strapped down his his legs, his arms, his neck. “So is 'swindle' and 'inveigle.' And so is 'flummox.' _Ow!_ ” he yelped as they tightened the restraints. “Don't pull that so tight, geez! You're gonna be hurting me anyw—AAARRGHHHH!”

[They're going to be hurting us anywargh?] 

“You... damn _fuckers..._ ” Deadpool hissed as one of the evil dudes pulled the knife out of his chest, “not gonna get... _anythin'_ outta me—OW!”

[Aww, the little kitty cat!] 

“Stabbing me in the stomach?!” Deadpool demanded as the knife was pulled out of said organ. “What the fuck, man?! You're gonna get _stomach acid_ everywhere, and that shit is _nasty._ ”

The evil dude apparently didn't care, since he stabbed Deadpool again. And again. And then started dragging the knife in long, slow slices, while Deadpool made obligatory noises of pained complaint. 

_“D... d... dammit... what the... the fuck you guys... wanna know, anyway?”_ Deadpool gasped out. “I'll tell you _anything!_ I know all X-Force's deepest secrets! I know what kind of _underwear_ they wear, what kind of _porn_ they like to watch—all the good stuff! You don't need to hurt me anym—” 

He screamed as a knife dipped in poison was stabbed into his thigh, the poison sending extra waves of agony coursing through his bloodstream, the substance making his heart stutter for a few moments before his healing factor simply did away with it. 

Seriously, he'd had _high-fives_ that stung more than this 'torture.' 

[Wow, you play the victim very well. What's that about, huh?]

The specific high-five he was thinking about had been with Colossus. Colossus gave _awesome_ high-fives. He'd high-fived Deadpool's arm clean off! 

_~Deadpool?~_

_~That you, Psylocke?~_ Deadpool thought, as the evil dudes torturing him started breaking his ribs by punching him repeatedly. Wow, really creative, guys. Really. _~We got ourselves in a bit of a situation, but don't worry, I got a plan. We'll get out fine.~_

Ooh, punch in this face! Good thing he was holding the conversation in his head, because the broken jaw would make communication difficult, otherwise. 

_~My god, Wade, the pain you're in—~_

_~Don't worry about it, darlin'. This is_ nothing, _seriously.~_

_~I can turn off your pain receptors—~_

_~Don't bother, Psych. I need to sound believable when I'm screaming in pain. And I'm used to it—the pain you're perceiving is worse for you than it is for me. This is a_ pleasant massage _compared to fighting Wolverine and the Hulk—at the same time!—believe me. And I fight Wolverine and the Hulk—at the same time!—for_ fun.~ 

Deadpool could see one of the evil dudes setting up an electrocution device.

_~So you miiiiight wanna get outta my head here~_ Deadpool suggested to Psylocke. _~They're about to get nasty. Well, nasti_ er. _They're not actually very good at this. You definitely don't want to stick around, though.~_

_~Wade—~_

_~GO!~_

Psylocke retreated just before electricity coursed through Deadpool, making him scream and writhe against the restraints cutting into him.

[You do realize Noh is watching this, right? He might get traumatized.]

Oh, right. Marvel Boy was locked in a cell with a perfect view of Deadpool getting tortured and pretending like the pain actually hurt. 

(Which it didn't, for the record. Surely Marvel Boy knew that, though—he'd seen Deadpool undergo far worse while grinning and laughing and joking.)

Marvel Boy was watching the torture with a sneer on his lips and murder in his eyes. “When I get out, I am going to end you all,” he said to the evil dudes, lowly, threateningly, not a single tremble in his voice. “And it is going to be really gross. And you are all going to be really, really sad.” 

[That... is the _best_ threat I have _ever_ heard. Let's them know the end result without letting them know how you're gonna do it. Leaves them _wondering._ And it's the dread and _fear_ that _really_ gets 'em.]

The evil dudes sent the Kree a look like they were trying to remind themselves that he was gene trash and injured and locked up and couldn't actually do anything to them, even though they were totally actually scared shitless. 

They turned back to Deadpool, sending another long burst of electricity through him, before demanding, “Who's your leader?” 

“God,” Deadpool panted. “He's mad at you guys for working with the devil and has sent us as your punishment.” 

_“The truth!”_ one of the evil dudes snapped, going back to dragging the poisoned dagger through the merc's flesh. 

“AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!” Deadpool screamed obligingly. 

_“We_ are the ones doing God's work!” the evil dude shouted furiously. 

“R-right,” Deadpool stuttered out. “When you imagine God, you imagine some old white guy or something, right? Tell me: how do you know God isn't a mutant? Or a woman? Or, like, both genders at the same time?” He grinned at the evil dudes' horrified expressions. “How do you know God isn't just a backwards, cosmic dog?” 

_“Shut up!”_ was screamed at him, and the guy doing the torturing started whaling on him with his fists again.

“H-h... how do you know God isn't an invisible pink unicorn?” Deadpool gasped out when his face was no longer getting punched in, and his broken ribs weren't threatening to puncture his lungs. “Or hey—just assuming that God _is_ some white guy—you say God loves man, right? Wouldn't that make God gay?” 

_“Shut! Up!”_ the evil dude yelled, punching him again. “You devilspawn know _nothing_ of God!” 

“Aww, come on! I thought you _wanted_ me to talk!” Deadpool said despite his cracked jaw and the blood welling in his mouth. “And actually, I know a guy who looks like a furry blue demon, and he's a devout Roman Catholic. In fact, he's even a _priest._ ” Deadpool grinned through his bloodied, tattered mask. 

The evil dude seemed tired of getting his knuckles bloody or something, because he just flipped the switch to electrocute Deadpool again. 

“You will talk,” the guy ground out. “But only about the information we ask. You will give us the information we want.” 

“And what info is that, huh?” Wade said, sounding far more destroyed than he felt. “Y'guys haven't exactly been _forthcoming._ ”

The evil dude glowered at him. “Tell us your plan.” 

[Wow, these guys really suck at this.]

_“Hawaii!”_ Deadpool cried. “We're gonna bomb Hawaii! From a fuckin' _zeppelin_. BOOM! Right into a volcano! Lava and cancer-causing radiation _everywhere,_ and only the mutants with healing factors and the ones made out of rocks and metal will survive!” He paused for a moment as the evil dudes just stared at him in shock and fury and anger and shit, before he challenged, What are _you guys_ trying to do, huh?!” 

“We're trying to make the Earth _pure._ ” 

Deadpool raised his brows. “Does that mean you guys are working on pollution and global warming or wha—ARGH!” 

“Where are your cohorts?” was demanded next. 

“Right behind you,” Deadpool said. 

The evil dudes whirled around one-hundred-eighty degrees, to see either a wall, one of their fellow evil dudes, or Marvel Boy locked up in his cell and glaring icy daggers through their souls. 

“Made you look!” Deadpool crowed. 

[Oldest trick in the book. Oh hey, rhyme!] 

The evil dudes couldn't appreciate a good joke though, apparently, because they just electrocuted him again, his back arching as he writhed. 

_“Tell us!”_ the shouty one shouted at him.

“Alright, alright!” Deadpool gasped out, panting. “One of us is a shapeshifter and is posing as one of you guys _right now._ Can you guess which one of you isn't really you?” 

The evil dudes glanced around at each other, nervous, suspicious, alarmed. 

“Well it's not me,” one of them said.

“It's not me,” said another.

“It's not _me,_ ” said the the third, who had been the one doing the torturing.

The others all chorused “It's not me”'s as well. 

“He who smelt it dealt it!” Deadpool offered helpfully. He then glared at the first evil dude. “You're gonna get what you deserve! You shoulda gotten us outta this shit by now!” 

“ _You?!_ ” the torturing evil guy demanded, pointing at the first guy accusingly.

“No, no, I swear, I'm not—!” the first guy said, hands raised, backing up towards Marvel Boy's cell as the other two evil dudes advanced on him. 

And then Marvel Boy spat on the guy.

The guy froze for a moment, blinking, and then, with sharp, jerky movements, he pulled out a gun and started shooting at the other evil dudes, killing a couple guys and getting bullets in a few others before the third guy shot and killed him.

The second guy cursed and tried to stem the blood flowing from his shoulder, while the third guy stepped over to the dead one and poked him with his foot, frowning, gun trained on the guy in case he moved again. 

Marvel Boy was looking strangely smug in his cell. 

[Ooh, Noh used the mind-control saliva! Kree: 124. Humans: still 34.]

* * *

_**~Sometime previous~** _

* * *

Hardly ten steps into the demon's cave, and the humans on the team froze. 

“Guys?” Marvel Boy asked, eyes flicking between Deadpool, Cable, Domino, Psylocke, Fantomex.  
They turned to him, eyes glowing with psychic orange flames, and the grins on their faces were not their own. 

_“Can't get a grip on your brain, your body,”_ came the demonic voice from their five mouths, their bodies jerking towards him, arms reaching. _“Such a strange nonhuman...”_

“It seems the intel was wrong about you,” Marvel Boy told the demon, leaping away, clinging to the ceiling. “You don't _control_ minds. You _override_ them.” 

Cable, Deadpool, and Domino rather clumsily fumbled with their guns, firing at him with far less precision than they themselves were capable of. 

He dropped down from the ceiling, weaving out of the way of their shots and blows, dancing around them, observing. 

Cable and Psylocke had strong telepathy that shielded them from telepathic mind control, and Fantomex had psi-shields in his mask that also shielded him from telepathic mind control. Deadpool's mind was apparently so confusing and crazy that, according to Cable and Psylocke, nobody would be able to read his mind, much less control it. Domino claimed mind control didn't work too well on her because the mind-controllers always got unlucky, and something always happened to release her from it. And the fact that Deadpool wasn't chattering meant that he was completely absent from his actions at the moment. Which could also be determined by that fact that he and the others had lost their characteristic fighting styles, fighting in a brutish and undisciplined manner that was entirely unlike them.

Therefore, whatever this was wasn't mind-control, and it wasn't telepathic. Which only begged the question: what _was_ it? 

The fact that the demon could control the humans, but not him since he was Kree, was telling. Something about human physiology allowed this demon to control them. 

As Marvel Boy dodged their attacks, reluctant to hurt any of his teammates, he noticed that they started off all moving the same, jerky and uncoordinated, orange flames in their eyes and their vacant smiles, but as they continued coming after him, the demon seemed to be getting the hang of coordinating their bodies. 

The demon started using Cable as the brute strength, Deadpool and Fantomex as the speed and agility. The movements of Domino and Psylocke remained more uncoordinated, and the demon seemed to have a harder time coordinating their bodies, relying on the human males as the front of attack. So, the demon had trouble with females, then. The demon was probably male. 

In addition, the demon soon abandoned the use of guns, and never once made a move to make Deadpool use the swords. 

Also, the demon wasn't using any of the mutants' abilities, and with Cable, the demon relied on the man's right arm, almost completely ignoring the techno-organic one. Actually, the demon seemed to be having trouble with entire left side of Cable's body. So something about organics. This demon didn't seem to like technology. 

Which could mean—ah, yes, the flames in Fantomex's eyes were started to stutter, his movements becoming uncoordinated again, and he fell to his knees, gripping his head and hissing through his teeth.

Fantomex had nanobots in his body. Not as advanced as the nanobots in Marvel Boy's body, but technology was still a large part of him, and his nervous system was a techno-organism. And the demon had no control over technology, so it was likely that the nanobots and his nervous system were fighting back. 

Flipping over Cable, Marvel Boy darted to Fantomex, kneeling down beside him. “Fantomex?” 

“Oui,” Fantomex muttered, face in his hands. “That was highly unpleasant.” 

Marvel Boy glanced up to see the others rushing them. “Get out of the way,” he told Fantomex as the supersoldier looked up and cursed. “I have an idea.” 

“Yeah, knock yourself out,” Fantomex said, lunging and rolling out of the way as Marvel Boy stood up to consider his demon-possessed teammates for the moment before they reached him. 

The females first, because the demon seemed to have less control over them. 

Darting under Domino's wild swings, Marvel Boy kissed her, darting his tongue over her lips. She froze, beginning to tremble, and he pulled away, just barely able to see the orange flames in her eyes start to flicker before Cable punched him. 

Marvel Boy staggered back, immediately having to dodge the fast blows coming from Deadpool, who the demon seemed to have the best control over—which was rather ironic, since the _last_ time something like this had happened, which had been an _actual_ mind-control incident, it had been _Deadpool_ who'd broken free first and then had to help Noh-Varr free the rest of them, given the fact that he was crazy and his mind couldn't be manipulated for long (Noh-Varr's Kree brain made it difficult for his mind to be manipulated, as well)—and make his way over to Psylocke to engage her in hand-to-hand combat. 

The demon seemed to be getting desperate, since it actually managed to use Psylocke's telekenesis. Not very well, but it did manage to make Psylocke telekenetically lift Marvel Boy off the ground above her.

Marvel Boy spat in her face. 

Psylocke didn't flinch when the saliva hit her, but a couple moments later the orange flames flickered, and she made a noise, staggering back, her telekenetic hold on him disappearing. 

Marvel Boy dropped back to the cave floor, only to be slammed into the rock wall by Cable, the mutant's right hand tightening around his throat. 

Marvel Boy spat up into his face. 

Cable's left eye flared yellow, the orange flames of his right eye fading, and he let Marvel Boy go, staggering back, gripping his head in his hands. 

Which just left Deadpool. 

By this time, the demon seemed to have a much better grasp of controlling Deadpool's body—it probably helped, too, that the demon no longer had control of the others and just had to focus on controlling the one human—and the demon-controlled Deadpool was an unrelenting force that fought so differently from how Deadpool fought that it was actually throwing Marvel Boy off a tiny bit. Just a _tiny_ bit, though. 

The demon was far less skilled than Deadpool, so it only took a few moments for Marvel Boy to maneuver his way under Deadpool's swinging arms and shove him against the wall, holding him there and quickly rolling up his mask to kiss him, tongue darting lightly over the mercenary's lips. 

Marvel Boy pulled back slightly, and for a moment the orange flames in Deadpool's eyes dimmed, before they brightened again. 

Right, Deadpool had a healing factor. The healing factor made it difficult for the nanobots to do their jobs before they got destroyed by his immune system. 

“Dammit,” Marvel Boy growled, leaning forward and kissing the mercenary again, shoving his tongue into Deadpool's mouth for good measure. 

_“What are you doing?!”_ came Cable's voice loudly from close behind him.

Marvel Boy stepped back, gesturing to Deadpool as the orange light left his eyes completely this time, and he slumped down the wall. _“That._ Freeing him from the demon's control. Like I freed you, Psylocke, and Domino.” 

Cable was glaring at Marvel Boy in what he was starting to guess was fury due to the fact that Deadpool was his lover, and Marvel Boy had just kissed him. 

“And you had to _kiss_ him?!” Cable demanded, fists clenched. 

Marvel Boy looked at him, blinking. “I suppose I could have spat on him repeatedly. But kissing is a faster and more efficient transfer of nanobots. I was able to dispel the demon from your mind by spitting on you, but with Deadpool's healing factor he needed a larger dose for it to work.” 

Cable opened his mouth, still looking angry, but Deadpool interrupted them with a bleary: “What the fuck happened? Did I miss something? And Noh, what's this about kissing me and spitting on my boyfriend?” 

“I either had to kiss you, spit on you, or lick you,” Marvel Boy explained, looking at the mercenary. “I needed my saliva to come in contact with your skin.” 

Deadpool blinked. “Okay, expound on this. In English. _Normal_ English!” 

“You all were taken over by the demon,” Marvel Boy said. “Fantomex was able to get his mind back due the nanobots in his body. The demon can't control technology. I also have nanobots in my body, and my saliva is nanoactive when I choose it to be. By infecting the rest of you with those nanobots, I was able to dispel the demon from your bodies.” 

There was a beat of silence as they all stared at him. 

“It was amusing to watch,” Fantomex said after a moment. 

“So, you have mind-control saliva?” Deadpool asked Marvel Boy, rolling the bottom half of his mask back down over his scarred chin. 

“Essentially,” Marvel Boy said. The way they were looking at him, he figured he should add: “But it's temporary. Your immune systems are already killing off the nanobots. So I suggest we get to this demon and deal with it quickly before I have to either kiss you or spit on you all again.” 

“Yes, _let's,_ ” Cable ground out, turning on his heal and striding off deeper into the cave. 

“Ooh, I love that game!” Deadpool cried, leaping up to his feet to skip after him. “I have one: after we deal with this demon, let's go get pizza!” 

The rest of them followed a few steps behind. 

“So,” Domino said, sidling up next to Marvel Boy, lips twitching. “Did I get spit or a kiss?” 

“A kiss,” Marvel Boy said, confused. He didn't get why it really mattered—the kisses weren't sexual, and the spitting wasn't in contempt. The actions had just been necessary. Whatever had been the easiest and most efficient way of getting nanobots into their bloodstreams. 

“What about Psylocke?” Domino asked. 

“I had to spit on her,” Marvel Boy said, confused. 

However, Domino just nodded, seemingly satisfied, continuing to walk beside him through the dark cave which was being lit in magenta and blue from Psylocke and Cable's telekenesis. 

“It really was amusing,” Fantomex said again. 

From the expressions they'd all been wearing as he'd explained, and the way they still looked now, it seemed to Marvel Boy that Deadpool was the only one who understood that all he'd been doing was helping out his team. 

But then again, that actually made some sort of sense, since Deadpool was the kind of human who would stab his beau in the brain in order to save him and the world, and everybody else hadn't seemed to understand how he could have done that. 

Sometimes Marvel Boy felt like Deadpool was the only human who made any sense at all.

* * *

_**~Now~** _

* * *

When the evil dude who'd been accused of being a shapeshifter didn't, in fact, revert back to a 'true' form, all the still-living evil dudes turned to glare furiously at Deadpool, who was, yes, still strapped down to the metal table, covered in blood from wounds that had, by now, healed. 

“Oops?” Deadpool offered them guiltlessly. 

Furious, one of the guys grabbed a poisoned dagger and stabbed it through Deadpool's heart. 

_“He's playing us!”_ the evil dude roared as Deadpool gave a pained yell. “This freak is useless to us! Bring out the other one!” 

[I hope we bought Noh enough time to heal...] 

Two of the other guys strode to the cell, unlocking the adamantium-barred door and stepping in to grab the injured Kree—

A second later, the cell door was wide open, and all of the evil dudes except for the one twisting the poisoned dagger in Deadpool's chest were lying dead on the floor. 

_“That_ is for wanting to kill everybody in the world who is _better_ than you,” Marvel Boy said, glancing around the carnage before his murderous gaze locked on the terrified gaze of the torturer, who didn't even have a chance to piss his pants before he was dead on the floor as well.

“And _that_ is for hurting my friend,” Marvel Boy hissed, kicking the dead body across the room, before turning to Deadpool and pulling the dagger out of his heart, which immediately started beating again.

“Marvel Boy, you are _marvelous!”_ Deadpool grinned as Marvel Boy undid the restraints, helping the unsteady mercenary to his feet, catching him when his legs buckled. “Hey, so was that the white-running thing you were telling us about?” Deadpool asked casually, blithely, interestedly, like he hadn't just been tortured and the lethal and agonizing poison in his veins wasn't still running its course. 

“Yes, it was,” Marvel Boy said.

“It's fucking _awesome,”_ Deadpool said, laughing brightly. “Kree: 125. High-five!” He held up his hand, grinning expectantly. 

Marvel Boy just stared at the mercenary's hand, which was soaked with blood from the pool of sanguine liquid that had spread to cover the metal table. 

After a moment, Deadpool asked uncertainly: “...You remember high-fives, right?”

* * *

_**~Sometime previous~** _

* * *

One moment, X-Force was surrounded by gunmen with their machine guns cocked, locked and loaded, trigger fingers twitching. 

The next moment, all the gunmen crumpled to the floor, and Marvel Boy was absent from their group.  
After another moment of looking around in shock, they spotted him standing there among dead bodies on the catwalk above them, breathing hard, fists clenched. 

Then he vaulted over the catwalk railing and landed before them in a crouch, standing and turning his head to them. They couldn't see his eyes through his opaque goggles. 

“How the ever-lovin' _fuck_ did you do that, Noh?!” Deadpool blurted. 

Everybody looked at him, and he said defensively: “Hey, everyone was thinkin' it! I was just the one to _say_ it! And,” he added,“I really, _really_ like being able to curse without all the comic book censoring!”

“It's called _white-running,_ ” Marvel Boy said, drawing X-Force's attention back to him. He gestured to the dead gunmen covering the floor of the H.A.M.M.E.R. base around them and sprawled across the catwalks above them. “I have complete control over my body, including adrenaline bursts that allow me to solidify my hair at will and enter the white-run mode where I am capable of ignoring any distractions while moving at my fastest while doing whatever means necessary to accomplish my goals.” 

He raised his chin. “All unnecessary stimulus is eliminated from conscious awareness. Body intelligence takes control. No distractions are permitted. The mind is still. There is no runner. Running is accomplished, that is all. There is no killer. Killing is accomplished, that is all.” 

The rest of X-Force continue staring at him. 

Again, Deadpool spoke first. “Y'know,” the Merc with a Mouth said, “if you ever get tried for murder before court, you should _totally_ us that excuse. _'I killed, yes, but I am not a killer. Killing was accomplished, that was all.'_ I need to remember that for the next time I accidentally kill someone. _I plea the eighteenth (Kree Diplomatic Gestalt)!_ ”

“That's not how it works,” Marvel Boy said, shaking his head. “You don't do anything by _accident_ in a white-run. You do exactly what you _need_ to do—and nothing more. And you would not be able to to white-run,” he added, inclining his head at the mercenary, “since humans do not have that kind of control of their bodies.”

“Huh,” Deadpool said, scratching his head through the mask in exaggerated thoughtfulness. “Mr. Sinister has complete control over his cellular structure,” he remarked. Turning to Cable, he asked, “Do you think he can do that, Nate?” 

“If he's capable of such a feet, I don't think he's thought of it or tried it,” Cable answered. 

“Most humans also seem to be very uncreative with their powers,” Marvel Boy noted. 

“Yeah, well, that's probably a good thing,” Deadpool said, gesturing grandly, “since creativity tends to lead to things like world domination and/or everybody in the world fearing you. And then you get the Civil War, and we've _been there, done that._ I do not want a repeat.” He shuddered. 

“And if we did?” Cable asked, raising his white eyebrows at the merc. “What side would you be on?” 

“Yours, Nate,” Deadpool snorted like it was so totally and completely obvious, seriously, why did Cable even need to ask that? “Whatever side _you_ choose to be on. If another Civil War happens, it is _not_ going to divorce us.” 

Cable wore a small, pleased little smile. 

“I feel like I'm missing something,” Marvel Boy said, head shifting slightly as he glanced between the two of them.

“Me, too,” Fantomex said, though his tone was wary. Or maybe it was bored. 

“It's their business, not ours,” Psylocke said pointedly.

“Ah, I remember the Civil War divorce,” Domino said, nodding vehemently, blue eyes widened slightly. “It was dramatic, and Nate basically used me as a rebound.” 

“You couldn't have been a rebound,” Deadpool told her, scoffing. “Nate and I weren't even actually _together._ Not like _together_ -together. We made jokes— _everybody_ made jokes—but we hadn't even, like, _kissed_ , or anything.” 

It was Domino's turn to snort. “That's because you're both emotionally-stunted males who were in denial of your own feelings while also thinking that the other couldn't possibly ever feel that away about you.” She narrowed her eyes at them both pointedly, before keeping her gaze on Cable, tilting her head. “And Nate and I were both a bit confused by lingering feelings from our past relationships.” 

“That's one way of putting it, I suppose,” Cable agreed. 

“Change of subject!” Deadpool cried, clapping his hands together, the noise echoing through the large room. “I think Marvel Boy gets a point for his white-running thing.” He turned to the Kree, asking incredulously, “And did you say you could turn your hair into a helmet?! Is that, like, in case you crash because you can't see where you're going or something?” 

“Or something,” Marvel Boy said. 

“Awesome sauce,” Deadpool decided, grinning. “Kree: 91. Humans: still 28. The Kree is _kicking our asses here_ , guys,” he said, making an encompassing gesture, before putting his hands on his hips and tapping his left foot. “I think we need to step it up. Say,” he glanced around the room full of dead H.A.M.M.E.R. agents, “are there any more guys to kill?” 

“Does anybody else wonder how the hell the idiot manages to keep track of those numbers...?” Fantomex said, sounding exasperated. 

Deadpool began picking his way over the dead bodies, poking at some of them with his boots. “...Dammit, Marvel, I think you got _all of them!_ ” he cried, throwing up his arms in indignation. “Left none for us! Wow,” he said, rubbing his chin, once more exaggeratedly thoughtful, almost like he had to make a parody out of being thoughtful because of his reputation of being thoughtless, “now I know how all my teammates felt back when I was working for the government before I got the cancer...” 

Marvel Boy drew himself up. “I regret nothing.” 

“Me, too!” Deadpool grinned, prancing over and raising a hand next to him, exclaiming, High-five!” 

Marvel Boy stared at him, then looked at his hand, then looked back at him. 

“...Do you know what a high-five is?” Deadpool asked.

“No,” Marvel Boy said truthfully.

Deadpool gasped, framing his face with his hands as he cried, “THIS MUST BE REMEDIED IMMEDIATELY. Nate!” he turned to the techno-organic, raising his hand next to him. “High-five!”

Cable raised his eyebrows, but after a moment gave Deadpool a light high-five.

_“That_ was a high-five,” Deadpool said, whirling around to look at the Kree, gesturing. “Well, kind of,” he amended, turning back to Cable. “Priscilla,” he said seriously, “you need to work on your high-fives.” 

Whirling around again, Deadpool skipped over to Domino, raising his hand and saying,“Dom! Show 'em how it's _done!_ ”

Grinning, Domino high-fived him enthusiastically. The slap of their hands echoed through the room, and they both shook their tingling hands afterwards, grinning.

“Now _that_ was a high-five!” Deadpool whooped, jumping into the air and throwing up his arms in celebration, before skipping over to Fantomex.

“Fantom, your turn,” Deadpool said, still grinning, raising his hand.

Fantomex _kind of_ high-fived him. Kind of. It really wasn't so much as a high-five as a light, quick, annoyed pressing together of palms.

“That...” Deadpool said, blinking, “was really wimpy.” 

He whirled around again, holding up his hand to Psylocke, grinning, “Psych, give me five!” 

Psylocke also _kind of_ gave him a high-five. You can really tell when someone's heart isn't in it, because the high-five turns out looking very sad. 

“...That was also a pretty bad one,” Deadpool said, blinking again. 

Then he turned back to Marvel Boy, already back to grinning as he raised his hand again. “Okay, Marvel, you try.” 

Marvel Boy high-fived him tentatively.

“Eh, not bad for a first high-five,” Deadpool shrugged, before spinning around and pointing at them all, the red eyes of his mask narrowed. “But all of you except for Domino suck at it!” 

Domino looked smug. 

“Rest assured,” Deadpool said fiercely, wagging a finger at the rest of the team, “I _will_ make you all work on this!”

* * *

**_~Now~_ **

* * *

Noh tentatively high-fived Wade's blood-soaked hand. 

“...We are going to continue working on that,” Deadpool said after a moment. 

“You know, Deadpool,” Marvel Boy said, picking the mercenary up bridal-style (Deadpool gasped and placed the back of a hand to his forehead, pretending to swoon—the Kree did not react to this), “I think you deserve a point for surviving what those men did to you, and for playing them like that.” 

“Aww, you're so sweet!” Deadpool cooed, fluttering his dripping red fingers over his heart and the searing throb that was already fading, fluttering his eyelids behind his tattered mask. 

The Kree didn't react to this, either. 

“But eh, it's nothing I haven't done before,” Deadpool said, tone indifferent as his arm wrapped around the Kree's neck, clasping with his other hand so that he was somewhat active in being carried. “I've had _way_ worse. These guys,” he snorted derisively, “were fuckin' _amateurs._ ” 

“White-running isn't anything I haven't done before, either,” Marvel Boy pointed out as he kicked down the door to the torture chamber, taking off down the hall at a freeway speed. “And they didn't stand a chance against me.” 

“...Fair point,” Deadpool relented. Then he giggled. “Hehe, _point._ Humans: now at (#+1).” He squirmed in the Kree's arms, blood-drenched mask drying and sticking to his skin, making his smile look like an uncomfortable grimace. “Happy now?” 

“Not even slightly,” Marvel Boy said coolly. Despite the fact that he was full-on sprinting, there was hardly a hitch of a pant to his words. 

“Oh,” Deadpool said, and paused briefly. “Well. Sorry about that?” he tried.

Marvel Boy raced through the halls, skidding around corners and lunging off walls, face still pulled in anger.

“But my plan worked!” Deadpool insisted, squirming enough that it was a miracle the Kree didn't drop him. “I got you to get us outta there!” 

“Indeed,” Marvel Booy said coolly, not sparing him a glance. His focus remained straight ahead. “Give yourself another point.” 

Deadpool stared up at his face, blinking. “...You just beat me at my own game,” the mercenary said, floored. Shaking his head, he said again to himself and probably the voice in his head, _“I just got beat at my own game,”_ before directing his attention back to Marvel Boy, saying almost accusingly: “I think you deserve a point for that.” 

Marvel Boy replied smoothly: “But you're the one who came up with the game in the first place. And it took me this long to get it.”

Deadpool appeared to grimace. “Okay, okay fine,” he capitulated. “Humans: 36. Kree: 126.” He rolled his eyes. “Happy now?” 

“No, I am _not_ happy,” Marvel Boy hissed. “The humans of this Earth are bestial _barbarians._ ” 

“Alliteration!” Deadool cried brightly, before he said, “But, uh, you realize that I'm a human, right? And I can be pretty damn cruel, y'know.”

“But you're not like _them,_ ” Marvel Boy said vehemently, continuing to run through the strangely deserted halls, often having to loop back on himself since the building seemed to be designed like a maze. “You have _morals_ and compassion. You have _pneuma_.” 

Wade didn't say anything for several moments. “I don't know that last word,” he said after the (for him) strangely long pause, “but, uh, others would argue differently. And, uh, you can put me down, now.” He squirmed in the Kree's grip like an eel. “I'm mostly healed up, y'know.” 

“Wade, if it wasn't for you, I would already have conquered this Earth and turned it into the new capital of the Kree Empire,” Marvel Boy told him frankly.

Deadpool blinked. “Uh, whaaa?” 

“You showed me the first kindness and true intelligence I experienced and witnessed on Earth,” Marvel Boy said matter-of-factly.

Deadpool blinked again. “Wait, _seriously?!_ ” he exclaimed. “Because if that's true then the world is _really_ fucked up!”

“You broke me out of the Cube and then paid your own money to _fix_ me,” Marvel Boy pointed out, “despite not knowing me at all—and despite knowing the fact that I was an _alien criminal._ ”

“No you're not,” Deadpool snorted, “you're a _kid_ and you—”

Marvel Boy interrupted him.“You introduced me to the blessing that is music, and thus made my life _infinitely better in every possible way.”_

“Uh, dude, cool it with the compliments,” Deadpool said uncomfortably, tightening his grip around the Kree's neck as he decided that running on the ground was boring or something and jumped to run along the wall, since he was definitely fast enough to do that kind of thing, and also he had weird cockroach powers which were creepy but also totally cool and incredibly Spider-Man-like. “You're making me nervous. And maybe you can put me down?” 

“They're not compliments,” Marvel Boy said, making no move whatsoever to put the mercenary down. “They're _facts._ ”

“Um... wow,” Deadpool said, clearing his throat, tilting his head back to look at the opposite wall instead of looking straight, which gave him a view of the ceiling, a view that used to be the left wall, and the where the right wall used to be was now the floor, and wow, gravity and physics were weird. And totally stupid laws, too. “I really don't know what to say. You have stunned me into not being able to come up with any kind of witty response. Congratulations. People have been trying to do that _forever._ ”

“I still don't understand humans, but you and this team have been helping me,” Marvel Boy said, seeming quite oblivious to the mercenary's plight of not knowing how to react to genuine compliments, especially from a Kree who insisted that they weren't compliments. “I no longer think that humans should be annihilated, nor subjected to Kree rule.” 

“...Thanks?” Deadpool tried.

“And from what information I've been able to glean about the Kree of this dimension,” Marvel Boy continued, “they are almost barbarians themselves.” His lip curled into a disgusted sneer. “This really is like being stranded in prehistory.”

“Are you going to put me down?” Deadpool asked, squirming. “I'm all healed now!”

“You're not as fast as me,” Marvel Boy pointed out.

“...Point taken,” Deadpool conceded as the Kree continued racing down the wall of the labyrinthine halls. He giggled to himself for some reason. “ _Hehe, point._ ”

“But you have shown me that there are virtues to some members of the human and mutant race, and that they are deserving of my protection,” Marvel Boy said. “As a member of an advanced culture and possessing superior intellect, it is my duty to protect Earth. Humans may one day be nurtured into a society like Cable dreams of. I believe that it is possible.” 

“If it ever _does_ happen, will you even be around to _see_ that?” Deadpool asked skeptically, his voice taking on a note of bitterness as he continued, “Cuz it's not gonna happen for a _long_ fuckin' time, if it ever _does_ happen.” 

“I am a genetically-enhanced Kree,” Marvel Boy said, and his expression had smoothed out to what looked like supercilious boredom. “My lifespan is significantly longer than any human, and longer even than your average Kree, who already live significantly longer than humans. And I am significantly harder to kill than any member of either races, as well.” 

“Except for me,” Deadpool said.

“On the contrary,” Marvel Boy apprised. “You aren't hard to _kill_. You're hard to keep _dead._ ” 

Deadpool paused, before starting to talk to himself lowly. “He's right. Why is he always right?” He raised his voice, directing the conversation away from the voice in his head and back at the Kree. “Y'know what? I like Nate better than you,” he said petulantly. “Sometimes I can be right while Nate is wrong—not often, but _sometimes._ Speaking of Nate—” he looked down the hallway, _“oh hey look, it's Fantomex and Domino!”_

Marvel Boy jumped back to the floor and skidded to a halt. 

“Ah, there you are,” Fantomex said, twirling a gun and feigning indifference as he and Domino slowed from a purposeful run to a lazy stop. “Psylocke reported that you were captured and getting a _peu_ roughed up, so Cable sent us to get you.” 

“And you got us! Yay!” Deadpool said brightly. “And we're getting put down!” he added, just as enthusiastically, as Marvel Boy did in fact finally put him down. “Double yay!” he jumped up and down, clapping his hands. “Now we can—” he and Marvel Boy spotted the soldiers approaching behind Fantomex and Domino at the same time, and while Marvel Boy immediately took off towards them, Deadpool leapt at Domino (the only one of the four of them without some kind of healing factor) and cried, _“get down!”_ as he shoved her to the floor just in time for the bullets to tear through the air above them. 

“Thanks, Wade,” Domino said, twisting beneath him so she could return fire at the soldiers, the first wave of whom were being quickly dealt with by Domino and Fantomex's shooting and Marvel Boy's fisticuffs

“No problem, Dom,” Deadpool said, getting off her as the bullets firing in their direction abated. _“Hehe, rhyme._ And no, I cannot ever get enough of those unintentional rhymes.” As they both stood up, Marvel Boy took one look down the corridor and then grabbed Fantomex, darting back over to them. 

“There's too many of them coming,” he said. 

“Then let's go go go!” Deadpool said, pushing at them and pointing down the opposite hall. “Thattaway!” 

They started running, the sound of a great many footsteps echoing in the hall behind them, and soon there were bullets flying by them. 

“And now thisaway!” Deadpool said, darting down a small side hall.

They ducked down the side corridor, about to keep running, but Fantomex said, “Wait, I got this.” 

“Got what?” Deadpool asked, stopping and looking at him.

“Misdirection,” Fantomex said, and though his mouth wasn't visible behind his mask, the smirk was audible in his voice. 

The large group of soldiers ran right past them, yelling, “Shoot 'em!” and “You can't run and dodge our bullets forever, freaks!”

“I love you,” Deadpool told Fantomex. 

“Comment pourriez-vous pas?” Fantomex answered, sounding smug. 

“Might want to ask Psych that,” Deadpool said, darting out into the hallway behind the soldiers, Fantomex glaring after him even as he and the others followed. 

With the soldiers chasing a misdirection of them, the X-Force members—

“We really need a better individual term than X-Force members,” Deadpool said to himself. “Maybe we're each, like, X-Forcians or something.” A pause as he listened to the voice in his head, holding a conversation with himself while running. Ah, the beauty of having a healing factor that kept him from getting out of breath. “You think X-Forcemen sounds better? I dunno, it sounds too much like the X-Men… what about X-Forcers?” Another pause. “X-Enforcers? Actually, I like that! Let's use that! Wow, you actually had a good idea for once!” Pause. “Okay, fine, you're right, you've had good ideas before… but usually you don't!” 

—charged them from behind, Marvel Boy running on the ceiling. 

In close quarters where the soldiers couldn't fire the guns without hitting their fellows, and taken by surprise, they never stood a chance against the X-Enforcers. 

“Lauryn said money change a situation,” Deadpool sang, rolling one of the dead bodies over with a rough kick, “Big said it increases the complication, Kane said don't stab, I ain't the one,” he picked an Uzi off the dead Purifier, cocking it. “Chuck said a Uzi weighs a mother fucking ton.” 

“Linkin Park's 'When They Come For Me'?” Marvel Boy said, glancing at him from where he was still sticking to the ceiling (because apparently his powers somehow transferred through his Kree-metal boots?), his white hair hanging down towards the floor.

“Yup!” Deadpool agreed blithely. “Kree: 127! Humans: 36.” 

Domino rolled her eyes, picking up her pace to walk ahead of them. Fantomex sent a glare at Deadpool (probably still mad that the mercenary had pointed out how all his attempts to court Psylocke had thus far failed pathetically) and sped up to walk beside Domino, engaging her in conversation pointedly.  
Deadpool was unconcerned. He turned to talk to Marvel Boy, since the Kree was cool and didn't get annoyed at him very easily. It was on Deadpool's To-Do List to try and annoy the kid later. When they weren't on a mission. 

When they were on a mission, it meant attempting to have actual conversations, to keep the whole communication-within-a-team thing goin' on that Cable was always yammering about. 

“Hey, your sticky cockroach powers are cool and all,” Deadpool said, tilting his head at the Kree as the four of them started walking down the hall, “but why are staying on the ceiling?” 

“Don't have a good reason to come down,” Marvel Boy shrugged. And somebody shrugging while walking upside-down on the ceiling looked pretty strange. Because usually when you shrug, you use your muscles to lift your shoulders up and then relax them and let gravity pull them down, except walking upside-down you figure that the Kree would actually relax his shoulders to lift them, and then pull them back to a standard position and hold them there… who knew how he managed to walk in a normal manner on the ceiling like that. It was actually more eerie than what Spider-Man did, since Spider-Man crawled like a spider. Which was less weird than just walking on the ceiling with normal posture. And Marvel Boy actually walked up and down walls like that, too, and _wow_ that had to be a fantastic ab workout. 

“I...” Deadpool said, blinking at Marvel Boy, “think you get another point for hearing everything even when you're wearing headphones...” 

“I have a layer of tympanic membrane covering my skin, which allows me to pick up sound more effectively,” Marvel Boy explained.

Deadpool nodded to himself, fiddling with the Uzi he was holding. “Huh.”

* * *

_**~Sometime previous~** _

* * *

Deapdool walked into the room to see Nate floating upside-down and mediating, legs crossed in the lotus position, his telekenesis evident in the blue glow around him.

In another part of the room, Noh-Varr, being half cockroach, was sitting cross-legged on the ceiling, wearing headphones and nodding his head to the music while tinkering with one of his gauntlets.

So they were both sitting cross-legged and upside-down. 

Deadpool sat down in one of the desks chairs and watched them, swiveling the chair back and forth as he waited. 

Noh-Varr glanced at him for a moment, probably just to let the merc know that he knew he was there, and then focused all his attention back on what he was doing. 

Nate looked so serene when he was meditating. He also looked pretty funny, floating upside-down like that. But he was... peaceful. Even more peaceful than when he slept. Wade liked seeing Nate peaceful.  
He liked seeing Nate furious, too. He liked seeing Nate murderous and serious and joyous. And peaceful. And content. And loving (nothing made his heart flutter like Nate's expression of adoration).  
Sometimes he liked seeing Nate confused, too. He even liked seeing Nate resolved to do something he didn't want to do but knew that he had to. (Wade admired him most in those moments, when he could see the weight of the world in every crease on Nate's face and every tense line of his body, and the way Nate bore that burden like the weight was what his ridiculously broad shoulders had been _meant_ to carry, all the while keeping his head raised like the burden was a kingly crown made of osmium that would bring any other being to their knees.)

But he didn't like seeing Nate troubled or sad or depressed or brooding or guilty, and he _definitely_ didn't like seeing Nate hurt.

So Wade watched Nate's face as the telekenetic meditated serenely, and tried to memorize the peace-softened lines of his chiseled features. The way his left eye shone through his eyelid. 

Wade wondered if Nate used his eye as a flashlight. He also wondered if that was the reason why Nate never got lost in darkness. 

He thought that his life wouldn't get so dark so long as Nate was in it. 

When Nate finally ended his mediation, he caught Wade's gaze upside-down, smiling softly, serenely, before twisting upright in the air and then lowering down to the ground, touching down far softer than an almost-seven-foot-tall man of 350 pounds of muscle and metal should be able to. 

“Wade,” Nate greeted. 

Deadpool was still swiveling the chair back and forth. “Kree: 92. Humans: 28.” 

“What?” Nate asked, blinking, confused—but softly confused, like someone who just woken up from a good night's sleep and was trying to make sense of something they had some sense they would understand if they were more awake.

Deadpool pointed up at the corner of the ceiling where Noh-Varr was still sitting and tinkering with his gauntlet (he might have switched to working on the other one when Wade was watching Nate). 

“The alien cockroach has been sitting upside-down and cross-legged longer than you did.” 

Nate smiled again, serenely, gently pulling Wade close and kissing him. Wade melted immediately into the touch, a soft kind of pleasure thrumming through him (so different from the sharp satisfaction of sadistic and masochistic violence).

“Well,” Nate murmured against Wade's lips, “I have a much better reason to come down than he does, I imagine.”

* * *

**_~Now~_ **

* * *

_SKREEEEEE!_

A Sentinel flew right over their heads as soon as the four of them entered the large computer room.  
“EEEEEEEEN!” Deadpool cried, throwing his fists up as the Sentinel crashed into one of the large monitor screens lining the wall behind them. 

(the four of them enter the room where Psylocke and Cable are to find the two telepath/telekenetics taking on several of the futuristic Sentinels, tearing them apart) 

“Come to help?” Cable asked, tearing another Sentinel apart with his telekenesis, bits of the adaptoid exploding like shrapnel, only to hit a telekenetic wall he'd quickly thrown up in front of the four of them. 

Cable and Psylocke, it appeared, were taking on a whole hoard of Sentinels, which were shifting between copying the powers of Colossus, Sunspot, and Iceman. Shrapnel of metal, bits of plasma, and shards of ice littered the room. 

As the others watched, Psylocke flipped over a Sentiel, stabbing it with a psi-blade and then tossing it at Cable, who cracked it with a techno-organic punch, sending it right into the plasma blast of another Sentinel.

“Actually, you two looking like you're doin' pretty good on your own,” Deadpool said, gaze on Cable as the mutant dodged a blast from one of the Sunsport adaptoids, using his telekenesis to direct the plasma blast straight at one of the Colossus ones. 

Cable's jaw was set, a sheen of sweat glistening on his face, and he moved with a strength and brutal efficiency that made Wade shiver and grin. “I think I'll just stand back and enjoy the view.” 

“Oui, the view is very nice,” Fantomex agreed, eyes on Psylocke as she vaulted off a computer just as one of the Iceman adaptoids tried to blast her with ice, orchestrating it so the blast hit the near-melted Colossus adaptoid, rapidly freezing the hot metal and making it go rigid. 

“It's just like that awful Fantastic Four movie!” Wade whooped. “But the old awful one that's nevertheless better than the new awful one! Which was a real shame that the new one is so terrible, considering that the actors are great—I mean, Michael B. Jordan and Kata Mara? Damn 20th Century Fox! But they also _sewed my fucking mouth shut,_ so, really, we all already knew how badly they can fuck things up— _it's all the studio's fault! Or the director's!_ But _not_ the actors! I mean—” 

Domino cut off his rant, rolling her eyes. “Let us know if you need us, Nate,” she called. 

“Are we not supposed to help?” Marvel Boy asked, confused, looking back and forth between the battle and his fellow team members that were just watching it and making no move to intervene. 

“Nah, the telepathekenetics are having a field day,” Deadpool said, gesturing to Cable and Psylocke, who were working together so seamlessly they were probably telepathically linked. 

“Hey!” the merc exclaimed, snapping his fingers in realization. “That should _totally_ be the word for you kinda brain power mutants! Telepathekenetics. Why isn't that the official term for your powers?” 

“Wade. You are an erudite and heroic genius of rare and learned ingenuity,” Fantomex told him, with feeling, though his eyes remained on Psylocke as she flipped and stabbed another Sentinel with her psi-blades. 

“Word,” Deadpool nodded, eyes never straying from Cable. “And you have an awesome costume.”

“Merci,” Fantomex said. 

“Tell me, Nathan,” Psylocke said, dragging the psi-blades down through the Sentinel, trying to ignore the staring, “since you seem used to this type of behavior—should I feel flattered?” 

“Yes,” Cable said, clenching a fist and moving it upwards, telekenetically punching a Sentinel straight through the ceiling. “And take the opportunity to show off a little, as well.” 

“Right,” Psylocke said, running at him, vaulting off his shoulders and arcing through the air to stab a flying, fiery Sentinel through the head, protecting herself from the flames with her telekenesis. She leapt out of the way right before the adaptoid exploded. 

“Woohoo! Nine point one!” Deadpool cheered, pulling a 9.1 sign seemingly from behind him and holding it in the air above his head. 

“Where the hell do you _get_ those things, Wade?” Domino asked, facepalming.

“The only solution I can conjecture is that the insides of his pouches exist in a different plane of space,” Marvel Boy answered. 

Domino raised an eyebrow at him. 

“He means that Wade's pouches are larger on the inside than they are on the outside,” Cable supplied, grunting as he caught the fists of one of the Colossus adaptoids, boots skidding as the Sentinel pushed him back. Somehow he managed to hear them over the keening, whirring, and blasting of all the Sentinels. Must have been using the telepathy to help him out with hearing the conversation. 

“That doesn't explain how he can fit a Desert Eagle down the back of his pants that _does not show,_ while he's wearing a _skintight spandex suit,_ ” Domino cried, throwing up her hands. 

“A Desert Eagle?” Marvel Boy asked in confusion. 

“It's a powerful semi-automatic handgun, Alien Boy,” Domino said, rolling her eyes, though she reached out and patted his arm consolingly. Looking at Deadpool and raising an eyebrow, she asked, “How many guns do you have on you right now, Wade?” 

“Like, at least eleven, I think,” Deadpool said, briefly glancing away from Cable to look down at himself as if he was mentally counting them, “not counting the one that got crushed earlier.” 

“See, and I only count _five,_ ” Domino said exasperatedly. 

“What can I say?” Deadpool said with a shrug. “I'm talented. Though if I could direct your attention back to the two talented individuals in front of us,” he waved at Cable and Psylocke, “because they're putting on _quite_ the show.”

“Can— _ngg_ —can somebody get the flash drive?” Cable grunted from where he was still locked in a shoving match with a Sentinel. Even as he said this, the Sentinel was shifting to mimic Sunspot's powers, opening its face to blast the mutant with a beam of plasma. 

“I got it,” Marvel Boy said, leaping onto the wall and climbing up it, crossing the ceiling towards where a small flash drive was sticking out of a port in the main database (it was a miracle that neither had been destroyed yet, even with the telepathekenetics' efforts to prevent the database and flash drive from being destroyed). 

“Marvel Boy's got it,” Deadpool said, watching in rapt fascination as Cable disengaged himself from the Sentinel, stepping out of the way and giving the adaptoid a telekenetic shove from behind, sending it sprawling into an Iceman adaptoid Psylocke had tossed his way. 

“En effet,” Fantomex agreed, watching as Psylocke leaned backwards to avoid an ice blast, jumping and twisting to deliver a telekenetically-enhanced kick to the Sentinel's chest. 

Cable punched through the icy adaptoid from behind. 

Wade suddenly shuddered, making a strange, almost squealing noise, hands over his hears as he hopped from one foot to another in agitation. 

“That... was a _disgusting_ noise!” he declared, sending an accusing glare off to his right, where there was nothing but a sedentary wall. “What was that, a centipede eating a tarantula?!” 

“What?” Domino asked, turning to stare at him as if he were crazy—which, okay, he was, but still. 

“Sorry, the voice in my head is hooked on Knife Party,” Deadpool said, waving a hand dismissively, turning his gaze back to the battle just in time to see Cable telekenetically twist a Colossus adaptoid in knots and send it hurtling into another Sentinel, breaking its blade-arm right off. “Whoo!” Deadpool cheered. _“Now_ you're playing with power!” 

“Power Glove?” Marvel Boy asked, dropping from the ceiling to the floor next to him, flashdrive tucked safely away in one of the concealed pockets on his suit. 

“You _totally_ went through my Anti-Venom playlist!” Deadpool accused, pointing at him without looking at him. 

“It was labeled as 'The AV WMD (Anti-Venom Weapon of Major Debilitation),'” Marvel Boy pointed out.

Deadpool did not seem impressed by this information. “So?” 

“It looked important,” Marvel Boy stated. 

“It might save your skin one day!” Deadpool cried, gesticulating, before he sighed, gaze through the tattered mask going wistful. “Damn, I so want to throw down with Venom... or Carnage...” 

“Throw down with an adaptoid Sentinel,” Cable said, throwing one of the Sentinels at him. 

“Ermahgerd, it's raining creepy Mystique-bots!” Deadpool cried, pulling out an umbrella and pointing it at the Sentinel. 

“You... have an umbrella...” Domino said, eying him even as she quickly stepped out of the way. 

“Now that it's raining more than ever, know that we'll still have each other, you can stand under my umbrella!” Deadpool sang, opening up the umbrella and shooting the Sentinel with a huge blast of power. “You can stand under my umbrella!”

Domino stared at the handle of the umbrella, blinking in disbelief. “Uh... wow...” she managed after a few moments. “The umbrella is a magnum...” 

“It's a _magnumbrella!_ ” Deadpool cried, brandishing the weapon.

Fantomex was staring at him as well. “That... is either extremely _bad, _or incredibly _brilliant,___ ” he said hesitantly. 

“I live to keep you guessing!” Deadpool said, closing the magnumbrella and then opening it again to cock the weapon, shooting another Sentinel straight through the roof (the umbrella part somehow seemed to enhance the blast of the magnum, somehow??), even as even more Sentinels flew in to join the party. “Wow, there sure are a _lot_ of these things,” Deadpool remarked, shooting them like he was playing some kind of first-person video game. “What the hell?” 

“Keep them busy,” Marvel Boy said, gaze flicking over the robots, eyes narrowed shrewdly. “I have an idea.” In a blur, he had run up the wall, across the ceiling, and dropped down onto the shoulders of one of the Sentinels Cable was fighting, saying, “Cable, I could use your assistance,” as he ripped off the adaptoid's head and sent a lazer blast down through its neck into the advanced components within its body. 

Cable nodded at him, and the fought their way out of the room, disappearing through a hole in the ceiling. Which just left Psylocke in the middle of a growing crowd of the robots. 

“Okay, I am _not_ staying out of the fun any longer,” Domino said, leaping into the fray with guns blazing. The bullets didn't do much, but her powers of luck proved to be her greatest asset, as the Sentinels that attacked her basically just ended up destroying each other, unable to hit her. She was just lucky like that. 

The others weren't quite so lucky. 

“Would somebody like to explain to me how this is 'fun'?!” Fantomex demanded as he picked himself up after getting slammed into a wall, only to immediately have to dive out of the way of an ice blast. 

“Say hello to the robots,” Deadpool said, gesturing grandly with his magnumbrella and shooting one of the Sentinels straight into the fiery beam of another. “What about this _isn't_ fun?” 

As he leapt to his feet and ran through the chaos of fire, ice, and metal, Fantomex growled out, “How about: _all of it!_ ” A Colossus adaptoid lunged at him, and he slide between the legs of another so that they crashed into each other. 

“Oh? And what's _your_ idea of a good time, Fantom?” Deadpool snorted, for some reason stopping for a moment in the middle of the melee to lean on his magnumbrella and raise a top hat that had appeared on his head sometime when the other X-Enforcers weren't looking. “Now check this out!” He twirled the magnumbrella extravagantly, and—

Was stabbed through the chest by one of the Sentinel's spear-arms. The top hat was knocked off his head and caught caught in a plasma beam that burnt it into a crisp. 

_“Nnngg,”_ Deadpool made a sound of pain, tilting his head up to glare defiantly at the Sentinel. “What the fuck, my man?! Have you no gentlemanly decorum? That was my favorite top hat!” 

The face of the Sentinel pulled apart like some kind of lurid orange flower in fast-motion, preparing to incinerate him. The Sentinel made a whirring, wheezing noise as it did so. 

“You don't sound to well,” Deadpool noted. “Have you had your temperature checked? I have just the thing.” And with that, he poked the magnumbrella into the robot's mouth and blew its head off.  
This of course also caused the umbrella material to catch on fire and the metal of the magnum to start melting, and Deadpool, staggering off the blade-arm with a wet slurping sound to reveal a gaping hole through his chest, stumbled and fell in such a way that the molten magnumbrella stabbed itself through the chest of an Iceman adaptoid. “Now I'm bleeding more than ever, but I can stab you with my umbrella!” Deadpool sang. “I can stab you with my umbrella, ella, ella, ella, eh, eh, eh!” 

“A party,” Fantomex muttered desolately as he dodged a plasma beam so barely that it singed his white suit. “A party is fun. Music, dancing, drinks, girls.” 

“Well,” Domino offered as she rolled and the two Sentinels who had lunged at her impaled each other, “I now have 'Umbrella' by Rihanna stuck in my head—thanks, Wade,” she shot him a glare, to which he saluted, “—so we got the music part covered. And the girls part covered, as well.” She gestured to herself and Psylocke, who was practically turning Sentinels into fireworks of metal and magenta energy with here telekenesis. “In case you hadn't noticed.” 

Fantomex didn't answer, too busy annoying Sentinels with bullets and trying not to die while he was at it. “Can't even use misdirection on robots since they don't have minds,” he hissed in frustration as he flipped to avoid getting encased in ice. 

“Now dance, fucker, dance!” Deadpool sang, moonwalking out of the way of a Sentinel Psylocke had flung at him, possibly unintentionally, but probably intentionally. Just in case, he threw his severed arm at her, but she dodged and the bloody arm hit the Sentinel behind her, disorienting it enough for her to tear it apart. “Man, they never had a chance! And no-one even knew, it was really only you!” Deadpool pointed at Fantomex as the supersoldier had to do a weird shimmy to avoid getting stabbed by one of the adaptoids. 

“Vas te faire encule,” Fantomex told him irritably, forced to dodge a metal Sentinel fist that could have caved in his skull. 

“The Offspring, now?” Domino asked the mercenary, stepping at just the right moment to cause one of the Colossus Sentinels to punch one of the Sunspot ones, causing the first adaptoid's arm to melt off. 

“And now you steeeaaal awaaay,” Deadpool sang, blocking a Sentinel strike with a single katana due to his one-armed situation, the robot's blow forcing him to his knees, “take them ouuuuut today...” 

And right before the adaptoid pushed the katana blade down through the mercenary's own neck, all the Sentinels suddenly disappeared. Including all the carnage. 

Fantomex, Domino, and Psylocke were frozen in surprise for a moment, staring around the empty, destroyed computer room, while Deadpool casually stood up and wandered over to where his dismembered arm was lying in a puddle of blood on the floor, putting the arm back to the raw joint and holding it there. 

“Well, that was fun!” Deadpool said cheerfully. 

“What just happened?” Domino asked, blinking as she unfroze, posture relaxing from the fighting position she'd been in as she looked around in continued bafflement. 

“The presence of the Sentinels was due to a time-space anomaly that was caused by the Purifier scientists,” Marvel Boy said, dropping down from the ceiling to land gracefully in a crouch, straightening up. “Cable and I repaired the interdimensional incision and sent the Sentinels back to their rightful place in the fabric of reality.” 

Fantomex holstered his guns, saying flatly, “So what took you so long?” 

Marvel Boy opened his mouth to answer, but Domino interrupted with, “That was sarcasm, Noh.” 

“No, it wasn't,” Fantomex countered. 

Marvel Boy's expression turned to confusion, and then to indifferent resignation as he realized that that had been one of the human interactions he could give up on trying to puzzle out. 

“Nice work you did,” Deadpool said, walking over and patting Marvel Boy on the shoulder with his newly attached arm, grinning (and it said a lot that he hadn't pointed out the play on words in _'sent_ the _Sent_ inels'). “You're gonna go far, kid.” 

“Thank you,” Marvel Boy said. 

Turning to grin at Cable who he'd heard come up behind him, Deadpool declared, “Us: +5,000,” indicating the entire team, before gesturing at the absence of Sentinels, and the entire Purifier facility in general, “Them: -5,000. We've just cleared another level!” 

Cable raised his eyebrows, and Deadpool clapped, cheering, “Game on! Or, more like, _Game Over._ For the Purifiers.” His mask was in such tatters that they could see his eyes light up as he abruptly brightened even further, exclaiming excitedly: “Ooh, can we blow this place up?” 

“We don't have any explosives,” Domino pointed out, crossing her arms and leaning into a hip, looking very much disappointed by said lack of highly combustible materials. 

“Yes we do!” Deadpool said, looking at Marvel Boy and gesturing grandly as he announced, “We have Noh's fingernails!” 

The others just stared at them. 

“Show 'em,” Deadpool urged, elbowing the Kree, practically bouncing with excitement. 

Raising a hand, Marvel Boy grew out a single fingernail two inches, the nail long, thick, and sharp. 

Cable looked assessing (as he basically always did about basically everything), Psylocke looked unfazed (as she basically always did about basically everything), Fantomex's eyes widened slightly, and Domino's eyes lit up. 

“You can grow your fingernails out at will?” she asked, fascinated. 

“Yes,” Marvel Boy said, growing out his other fingernails as well. “They're explosive and poisonous.”

Domino whistled appreciatively, grinning. 

Walking over to stick a fingernail into the main database in the room, breaking of the nail with a flick of his wrist, Marvel Boy turned to them, cautioning, “You might want to stand back.” 

The team took a few steps back. Except for Deadpool, who jogged to the opposite side of the room, looking incredibly pleased.

_“Way _back,” Marvel Boy said, after blurring for a moment and reappearing beside the mercenary.__

The others had hardly joined them when there was a _KA-BOOOOOOOOOM!_ and the database exploded violently, Cable quickly throwing up a telekenetic shield to protect them all from the heat and shrapnel. 

The sound of the explosion still ringing in their ears, the X-Enforcers, aside from Deadpool and Marvel Boy, stared at the destruction in stunned silence. 

The ceiling and two walls had been completely blown off, and the cool morning air swept across their dust and blood-covered skin, playing with the tattered tears in their suits. 

As the smoke cleared, the sky was revealed to be rouged with sunrise. 

After the period of silence hit sixty seconds, Deadpool snickered. “Kree: 128. Humans: still 36,” he said blithely. 

“I'll take care of the base,” Marvel Boy told them, waving fingers to show off the full hand of explosive fingersnails, having grown out the once he'd broken off. “Get as far away as possible—I'll catch up with you.” 

* * *

From the rise of the hill a mile away, the explosion of the main Purifier base was a beautifully catastrophic sight. 

* * *

_**_~Later, the X-Force base~_ ** _

* * *

With Jean-Phillipe's awesome biological spaceship, E.V.A., it took hardly a minute for X-Force to return to their base. 

As they exited E.V.A. and walked through the garage, weaving around the organized chaos of Noh-Varr's Kree spaceship project, Wade announced, unsolicited: “The current tally: Kree: 129. Humans: still 36.”

At least two members of the team groaned. Possibly more. Groans kind of melded together, and counting them became like trying to count how many raindrops are creating that growing puddle in the sidewalk. 

Of course, since Wade was about as used to being surrounded by annoyed or pained groans as someone in a rainforest would be used to getting rained on, he was adept at ignoring such groans. 

“That was an EPIC explosion, Noh!” he said, nodding at the Kree with a grin. Then his eyes lit up even further. _“Ooh, alliteration!”_

“You know, I've been starting to wonder about your obsession with literary technique,” Jean-Phillipe said, raising his eyebrows slightly. He had black eyebrows and black hair, which could actually be seen through the tattered remnants of his mask. Some of his hair was sticky with congealing blood. Usually all any of them ever saw of his face were his blue eyes and the bridge of his nose. He was even more averse to taking of his mask than Wade was. 

With his mask tattered like it was, his face half exposed, it was easier to see him as a young guy who could be going to college, rather than just as a skilled supersoldier. 

Thus, Wade took pity on him. “It's cuz we're in a fanfic right now,” he explained patiently. “You gotta pay attention to the writing style, y'know! The same way you pay attention to the art in comics, or the special effects in movies.” He gestured at the TV as they entered the main room. “Like my CGI face in my movie trailer, in order to preserve my emotive face even with the mask—WHY THE CENTIPEDES EATING TARANTULAS AGAIN?!” he shrieked, slamming his hands over his ears and jumping from foot to foot, shuddering. “I mean, seriously!”

The others stopped walking to stare at him.

“...Oh,” Wade said after a moment, head canted to the side. “There are better ways to get my attention, y'know! And what do you mean I'm supposed to take it easy on the fourth-wall-breaking thing?!”

“Sometimes, I almost forget you're crazy,” Neena said. “And then you do something like _that,_ ” she gestured at him, rolling her eyes up to shake her head at the ceiling, “and _remind_ us all.” 

“What can I say?” Wade beamed like she'd just given him a compliment. “I have an enigma stigma.” A giggle. “Hehe, rhyme!” 

Neena facepalmed. “That's it,” she said, brushing black hair and dried blood out of her white face (and man, you didn't know the definition of white skin until you saw either Neena Thurman or an albino), and there might have been bruising around her left eye, but it was hard to tell because of the dark oval there. But other than a few scrapes, she seemed to be fine. “I'm leaving before I lose any more brain cells. Need to take a shower anyway.” With that, she turned on her booted heal and strode out of the room.

“Yeesh! That sound _tickles!_ ” Wade cried, shuddering again and swatting at his ears. “Seriously, quit the centipede munching sound! _I got your point already!_ The wall shall remain intact!” 

“Okay, all three of my brains are weirded out,” Jean-Phillipe said, watching the merc warily. “Definitely my cue to leave before the violent one does something drastic.” So saying, he left. 

Noh-Varr was tilting his head as he watched the merc continue to shake his head, hands clamped over his ears. “I'm tempted to ask what's going on in Wade's head.” Noh-Varr bit into an apple that hadn't been in his hand a second before, and his white hair blew into his face as if there'd been a strong breeze from an open window. 

“I am _not_ going to take a look,” Psylocke said flatly. Somehow, there wasn't a scratch on her despite how much skin she had exposed, and her black hair, that always seemed to possess a violet sheen when cast in light, was remarkably untangled. Damn but there were pluses to being a powerful and skilled telekenetic. “You're on your own.” She headed for the showers. 

Wade turned to look up at Nathan, who was watching him silently, face unreadable. There was a gash above his left eye where metal showed through the synthskin. 

“Nate, if you leave, the Kree get another point for Noh being the only one not annoyed or creeped out by me,” Wade said, trying not to fidget and look at the floor, or the wall, or down at himself where more scarred skin was showing than was covered, his suit had become so tattered. And even what of the suit was left didn't do anything to conceal how much he'd been injured that mission; the material that had started out flexible and white was now stiff and a dark red-brown. 

Nathan's mismatched eyes trailed over Wade's state, trying to assess the degree of damage the merc must have sustained. His jaw was clenched subtly and Wade could no longer keep from fidgeting.  
Noh-Varr, for his part, was sitting cross-legged on the floor in the corner of the room he'd claimed as an extension of his workshop, snacking on a pineapple, prickly outside, tough leaves, hard core and all. A moment later his hair was blown back again, and he was then eating raw eggs out of a carton, eggshells, carton and all. He did not appear to be bothered, and he did not appear to be leaving. 

“I'm not annoyed or creeped out,” Nathan said, meeting Wade's gaze.

“Okay,” Wade said. 

“I would like a shower, though,” Nathan continued, raising a white eyebrow. An invitation.

“I think everyone wants a shower,” Wade agreed, either ignoring or oblivious to the intimation. “We're all pretty disgusting. Well, except for Noh,” he added, glancing over at the Kree, whose black and white suit was currently in pristine condition. “Noh, why aren't you all disgusting?” 

“My suit is self-cleaning and self-repairing,” Noh-Varr answered, not looking up from the gadget he was working on. He was snacking on a raw onion. 

Wade paused, just staring at him for a few moments, before he grinned, shaking his head.“Kree: 130. Humans: still 36. The Kree's almost a hundred points ahead of us, guys! We need to pick up the slack!”

Nathan sighed frustratedly. _“Wade...”_

“What?” Wade asked, looking at him in puzzlement. “And why are you glaring at Noh?” 

Noh-Varr glanced over at the telepathekenetic mutant. “...You're jealous,” he guessed after a moment, tilting his head, brow furrowing. “It doesn't make sense for you to be jealous. Didn't you say that Wade used the _Kree vs. Humans_ Point Game to annoy you all, especially yourself?” he pointed out. “And weren't you also the one who told us that Wade thrives on attention, whether positive or negative? Because in those cases, it would seem that he is awarding me a high amount of points mostly to get a rise out of you—and since he is trying to get a rise out of _you_ rather than _me_ , I believe that would indicate that he is aiming for your attention rather than mine. And he obviously is hopelessly in love with you,” he added, looking between them, silently indicating that it was so obvious even a _Kree_ could see it. “So it is nonsensical for you to feel jealous of me.” 

“The Kree understands (warped) human logic, while the human looks like he's getting a headache trying to understand Kree logic!” Wade cried, clapping. “Kree: 131! Humans: still 36!” 

“I believe this proves my point,” Noh-Varr said, gesturing at Wade with his chin before turning his attention back to whatever new gadget he was working on. His hair was blown into his face, and then he was snacking on what appeared to be some kind of moldy takeout that had gotten pushed to the back of the fridge and been left there so long it was now indistinguishable. 

“Your premise is flawed,” Nathan told the Kree, ignoring the state of the food he was eating. “It _does_ make sense for me to be jealous, because he's _trying_ to make me jealous.”

“Humans: 37,” Wade said, lips quirking. “Kree: 131. Damn, though,” he continued, walking over to look at the strange substance in the nondescript takeout container. “What the hell even _is_ that?” 

“Doesn't matter,” Noh-Varr shrugged, taking another bite of the rotted substance and still focused on his work. Though whether he was responding to Wade's question or Nathan's statement was unclear. And it didn't really matter. 

“You know I love you, Wade,” Nathan said softly, coming over to put a hand on the merc's shoulder, gently turning him around to face him. Nathan's large hand caressed Wade's lesioned cheek. “You don't have to try and make me jealous.”

“Is he trying to make you act on that jealousy?” Noh-Varr tossed out the question without actually looking at them. When he was working on a project, he almost never looked at whoever was talking to him. He even acted oblivious to knives that were being juggled over his head by Neena and Wade.

“A good question,” Nathan agreed, keeping his gaze on Wade's eyes. 

“Hey, Nate, _look,_ ” Wade finally peeled his gaze from the floor to meet Nathan's, reaching up a hand to run his fingers through Nathan's white hair, saying earnestly, “no matter _how_ many points that Noh gets for the Kree, he's not the one who has the deadliest mercenary in the world _madly in love_ with him.”

The corner of Nathan's lips twitched. “The deadliest mercenary in the world, you say?”

“I could kill you in twenty-three different ways right now,” Wade told him seriously, one hand playing with the hair at the nape of Nathan's neck while his other hand splayed flat against Nathan's broad muscular chest. 

Nathan raised an eyebrow. “Only twenty-three?”

“Well, twenty-five, now, since I just thought of two more,” Wade said. “Ooh, twenty-six! And counting!”

“Mm,” Nathan murmured, leaning down to rest his forehead against Wade's, their breaths intermingling. “And whatever did I do to deserve the love of the world's deadliest mercenary?”

Wade looked away even as he wrapped both arms around Nathan's neck and pressed closer. “I dunno. You existed? You got infected with a techno-organic virus as a babe, grew to a whopping six-feet eight-inches, got white hair prematurely, developed an inordinate sense of responsibility that borders on a messiah complex, grew a tortured tough-guy shell to hide the real sap you are deep down inside, gave me a chance to be more than the world thought I was, and you think I'm somehow worthy of love despite the insane killer that I am?” 

“You deserve all my love and _more_ , Wade.” 

“See?!” Wade exclaimed, pulling back to look at him, grinning and poking him in the chest with a finger. “You act all gruff and grumpy on the outside, but inside you're a _sap!_ I totally called it!” 

“So you did,” Nathan said, amused. “So tell me, Wade. How many points do I get for doing this to you?” And then he pulled Wade close, removed the tattered remains of the Deadpool mask, and kissed him till the merc was vocalizing his bliss in low, desperate moans. 

_“That_ , Nate,” Wade panted when they pulled away, “is a completely _different_ game, called: How Mind-Blowingly Sexy Can I Be Without Making Wade's Head Literally Explode From The Sheer Amount Of Sexiness? And you _totally_ win that game. Noh isn't part of that game cuz, _ew,_ no, he's like our adopted _son!_ I mean, come on. And if the _Kree vs. Humans_ Point Game bothers you so much, you can just think of it as the _Nate's Dream Society vs. Our Current Society_ Point Game.” 

“My dream society is half-cockroach hybrids that don't understand sarcasm?” Nathan asked. 

“Ooh, _burn!_ ” Wade snickered. “Humans: 38. Kree: still 131.” 

“And your current society is without system, comprised of nothing but fear and greed and stupidity,” Noh-Varr pointed out, lifting a piece of tech up to inspect it, then modifying it with a thin lazer-beam from one of his gauntlets. “The entire plane is run by primitive primeurban protection rackets with something called 'law' as the only thing dividing _one_ gang's methods from another. Your leaders are _murderers_ who say violence is wrong, then drop bombs whenever they have a _point_ to make. _Millions_ of your people can't even get shelter or enough to eat. I could go on and on… The whole ugly planet sucks.” He inspected the piece of tech again, before appending it to a larger piece. “Except for the music.” 

“Heh,” Wade said, looking down and smiling wryly, shaking his head. “Kree: 132. Humans: still 38..” 

Nathan looked up at the ceiling and groaned in exasperation. “How is this my life?” 

“Because you're stupidly in love with Deadpool, aka the Merc with a Mouth, aka the Regeneratin' Degenerate, aka that psycho mercenary who doesn't shut up and drives everybody crazy,” Wade answered immediately. 

Nathan looked at him, kissing him again, softly. “But you're the one in love with a man from the future who's constantly fighting off a virus that wants to turn him into metal,” he pointed out, “and who, you've said, 'constantly tries to save the world by sacrificing himself at it.'” He raised his eyebrows. “So who's the stupid one here?” 

“Oh, definitely me,” Wade said, nodding animatedly. “But everyone already knows I'm stupid— _you're_ supposed to be the _smart one._ ” He punctuated this by poking Nathan in the chest again. 

“And what's so stupid about being in love with a man who can't die and is one of the most dangerous mercenary's in the world?” Nathan asked skeptically. 

This gave Wade pause. “...Well, he's pretty damn ugly,” he muttered finally, unable to meet Nathan's gaze. 

Nathan took Wade's chin and tilted it up so that the mercenary had to look at him. “Whether something is 'ugly' or not is a matter of personal opinion,” Nathan said, quietly but forcefully, blue eye intense and blank eye flashing. “'Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.' Confucius.” He traced his large fingers over Wade's jaw. “And I don't think you're ugly.” 

“Quoiting philosophers at me, are you?” Wade snorted, take Nathan's hand, stilling it. “Okay. What quote can you use to justify being in love with someone who's _insane?”_

“'And those who were seen dancing were thought insane by those who could not hear the music,'” Nathan said immediately, smirking. “Friedrich Nietzsche. You're not making this very difficult for me, you know.” 

“Okay okay,” Wade said. “Fine. _I_ have a quote: 'Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.' I don't know who said it first, though. I think it might be a fake Buddha quote or something. But I _heard_ it first from Spider-Man. Although, according to the little box in my head, according to the internet it's often attributed to someone named Haruki Murakami (whose last name is also the name of a song by Made In Heights, which the author is crazy about right now).” Wade tilted his head thoughtfully. “I have yet to find out how the little text box in my head gets wifi connection. Although a lot of stuff has been done to my brain—maybe someone stuck a wifi router in there at some point.” 

“Hm,” Nathan said, holding Wade close and resting his chin over Wade's head. “It's a good quote for you.” 

“The little box says there's also the quote: 'You feel your strength in the experience of pain,'” Wade said, resting his head against Nathan's chest. “Jim Morrison. Apparently. And: 'It never gets easier. You just get better.' Author Unknown. Which would be a pretty awesome pseudonym, I gotta say.” Wade suddenly pulled away roughly, slapping at his forehead. _“Dammit—stop clogging up my brainpan with stupid quotes!”_ He turned to glare at Nathan, annoyed but without venom. “Nate, it's all your fault. I blame you. Now the stupid text box won't stop.”

“Sorry,” Nathan said. “Here, maybe this will help.” And he proceeded to kiss Wade senseless.  
When he finally pulled back, smirking, Wade blinked at him dazedly. “...All systems offline...” 

Nathan chuckled softly. 

“You know, I think I understand what Domino means when she calls you two 'sickening,'” Noh-Varr told them, causing them to look over at him in surprise. “And I have a strong stomach.” 

“Ermahgerd you're still here!” Wade cried, laughing. “I thought you'd've, like, slipped away by now!” 

“I was in this room first,” Noh-Varr said, lifting his head form his work to look at them, unimpressed. “If you two want privacy, _you_ leave. Otherwise, you can just go down on each other right there, with me still in the room—I _don't care._ I am not leaving this room until I finish what I'm working on.” Then he looked down and continued working on his project and snacking on random foods—not that all of it could be considered food by normal human standards, per say—that he'd swiped from the kitchen. 

Snickering, Wade looked up at his beau, smirking. “I'm tempted to take the kid up on his offer and go down on you right here. We can pretend we're making a porn video, and laugh our asses off when he doesn't react.” 

Nathan snorted. “Let' _not._ ” 

“I doubt we could scar him—the kid's got a mind of steel, I tell ya. It might be fun to try, though.” 

_“No,”_ Nathan said firmly.

“Aww, but wouldn't it be hilarious if Jean-Phillipe or Neena walked in on us?” Wade wheedled, still grinning mischievously. “I bet their reactions would be _hilarious!_ Betsy wouldn't come anywhere near the room though, cuz telepathy.” 

“I'm going to take a shower, and then I'm going to our room,” Nathan said, stepping away and walking toward the corridor. He paused with a hand on the doorway. “If you want sex, you'll join me _there._ ” 

Then he left, and Wade listened to his footsteps fade down the hall. 

“Sigh,” Wade said, walking over to sit down cross-legged next to the Kree. “He's always going to win, isn't he, Noh?” 

“He _is_ the more intelligent one in your relationship,” Noh-Varr pointed out, doing that thing where he didn't look at who he was talking to. 

“Thanks.” 

“You may rest assured, however, that you have the better intuition,” the Kree added.

Wade raised his brows, lips quirking. “So you're saying I'm the woman in the relationship.” 

“I do not understand human concepts of gender stereotypes.” 

“Sorry,” Wade said, shaking his head and playing with the frayed fabric at his knee. But he couldn't help asking curiously: “Anything else I have over Nate? _And yes, I'm totally fishing for compliments here.”_

“You're also the more polymath fighter,” Noh-Varr answered, still not looking at him in favor of focusing on his gadget that, whatever it was and whatever it did, would probably make Tony Stark drool. “And your unique, seemingly senseless, but strangely effective brand of reasoning complements Cable's straight-forward approach nicely.” 

“Aww, I didn't know you were so sweet!” Wade squeed.

“I'm not. I'm just stating facts.” 

“The best kind of compliments!” Wade insisted. 

Finally glancing over at the merc, confused, Noh-Varr asked, “Are you going to follow him?” 

“Well, yes,” Wade said. “But I can't follow after him _immediately_. I have _some_ sense of pride, y'know. I feel obliged to make him wait a little bit so the smug doesn't blow up his head. Cuz then it would either pop or float away, and I like his head perfectly intact and correctly in place.” 

Noh-Varr blinked at him, lips pursing. “Sometimes you say things that don't make sense to me,” he confessed.

“And sometimes you state the obvious, Mr. Alien,” Wade answered, grinning lopsidedly.

“So, according to your human logic, how long do you need to make him wait?” Noh-Varr asked, brow crinkled. “Is there a set time?” 

“The time it takes me to get bored talking to you, plus the time for me to take a shower and scrub all the dried blood off, plus the added time it takes for me to find my French maid outfit after,” Wade said. 

“Right...” Noh-Varr said, blinking at him for a few more moments, before deciding it wasn't worth the brainpower to try to understand him and instead just returning to his super-advanced technology that would boggle the minds of human geniuses like Reed Richards. 

“So, Noh,” Wade said, leaning forward, elbows on his knees and chin on his hands. “What are you working on?”

Because, hey, after confusing the poor kid so much, the least he could do was let Noh have a turn making _his_ brain hurt.

**Author's Note:**

> Nate knows Wade will come back to him eventually, and Wade knows Nate will wait for him to come back.
> 
> That's how things work between them, it seems, when things between them do work. 
> 
> Or, then again, maybe it's Wade usually doing the waiting, and Nate knowing that Wade will wait. Definitely in the comics, what with Nate's tendency to disappear into the future for extended periods of time. And to be dead, or in a coma, or something, for extended periods of time. 
> 
> An another note, I am very proud of that magnumbrella. I love it when I get one of those rare strokes of brilliance. Hehe.
> 
> Anyways! This is all I have for this series. It's possible I might write more for it at some point, but I don't know. Knowing me, I wouldn't count on it. I'm honestly astonished I managed to get this far on this series, or even just on this story. I usually loose interest with writing a story arc at about 20,000 words, because I suck like that. 
> 
> Anyways (again)! I hope you all enjoyed this ridiculously long one-shot! And I know it was ridiculously long, but if you could tell me what your favorite parts were, that would be greatly appreciated. I like hearing what you guys especially enjoy reading, and it would help me if I ever decide to write more on this arc in the future. 
> 
> Thanks for reading this monster! Lol. Honestly, writing and then editing this thing was like creating a Frankenstein monster, I swear.  
>  
> 
> **Notes on character strength, in regards to the arm-wrestling scene (information taken from the characters' Marvel wikia pages):**
> 
>  
> 
> Deadpool possesses great, though not unnatural, physical strength. He does possesses the strength of an Olympic level weightlifter. While the exact amount of weight he can lift isn't known, he is able to lift at least 420 lbs. His true upper limit is unknown, but due to his mutant heritage, it should be somewhere around 1400 lbs, and he would only have to stop there due to his forearms breaking under the weight. To date, Deadpool has lifted up to 800 lbs
> 
> Class 10; Cable's left arm is superhumanly strong, and he can augment himself by using his telekinesis. Without the mechanical arm and augmenting his strength Cable possesses athlete level strength . 
> 
> Class 25, Noh-Varr can press lift 25 tons.


End file.
